Climate Denial is a Form of American Exceptionalism

An American flag in the Breezy Point neighborhood in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.Photo: Getty

America is already great, my friends, at least when it comes to climate denial.

New research published this week in Nature Climate Change shows the U.S. is without peers when it comes to denying the basic science of climate change. Scientists surveyed people in 25 countries around the world, and found there’s no country quite like the U.S, where climate denial is much more closely tied to one’s political persuasion than any other country.

The researchers say this is actually a good thing, because it means there’s nothing inherent in conservative ideology that causes people to reject science…

The researchers say this is actually a good thing, because it means there’s nothing inherent in conservative ideology that causes people to reject science…

That’s right… Nothing inherent in conservative or libertarian ideology causes people to reject science… If It did, I wouldn’t be a geologist… And I’m guessing that Anthony wouldn’t be a meteorologist and that quite a few other scientists wouldn’t be scientists either. And… No one denies the climate. I’m fairly certain that “climate denial” is both grammatically and physically impossible.

And… What the frack does HurricaneSuperstormFranknestorm Post Tropical Cyclone Sandy have to do with climate change? [1][2]

Conservative/libertarian scientists simply reject “science” as it is defined by liberal social justice warriors. From a previous post of mine…

The ARS Technica article includes a graph from the paper:

“As scientific literacy goes up to the right, conservatives are equally likely to know what scientists have concluded and less likely to believe that themselves.”

Firstly, this does not demonstrate “a big gap between what scientists understand and what the public thinks it knows.” The two panels in the graph comprise a non sequitur to that “big gap.” The first panel has nothing to do with the supposed scientific consensus on climate change (Humans are responsible for more than half of the warming since 1950). This is as bad as Doran & Kendall Zimmerman in its flawed logical reasoning. Accepting the assertion that humans are primarily responsible for climate change does not follow from knowing that carbon dioxide is a so-called greenhouse gas.

As a professional geologist, I know the answer to the first question is “carbon dioxide” and the answer to the second question is “mostly because of natural patterns in the Earth’s environment.” There is no logical requirement for the first answer to lead to “mostly because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels.”

Oddly enough, Doran & Kendall Zimmerman found that a majority of academic & government economic geologists agree with me (they only surveyed academic & government scientists.”

It should come as little surprise that geoscientists have consistently been far more likely to think that modern climate changes have been driven by overwhelmingly natural processes. A survey of APEGA, the organization responsible for certifying and licensing professional geoscientists and engineers in Alberta, found that 64% of geoscientists rejected the so-called consensus for various reasons, with climate change being overwhelmingly natural leading the pack.

This study is very interesting because it analyzes the frames of reference (Kuhn’s “different worlds”) in which opinions are formed. Skeptical geologists are most likely to view climate change as overwhelmingly natural. Skeptical engineers are more likely to view it as a matter of economics or fatalism. The cost of decarbonization would far outweigh any benefits and/or would have no measurable effect on climate change.

None of which is ideologically driven, unless there are some unseen forces that drive conservatives into geology and/or engineering… Or something about geology and engineering that drives the practitioners towards conservatism and/or libertarianism. I know that having real jobs, paying beaucoup taxes and having to cut through government red tape, just to do our jobs, certainly could be a motivating factor… The AAPG doesn’t conduct political surveys of its membership, but one company, Seismic Micro-Technology (SMT), did conduct an unscientific survey during the 2008 AAPG convention and found that, “geoscientists are a politically diverse group of people, with no disproportionate representation for any political party.” They also found that 47% of respondents agreed “that human factors are primarily driving global warming.” 36% disagreed and 17% were undecided or unsure. So, the AAPG members who visited SMT’s booth and took the survey probably skewed to the left a bit and SMT’s reporting of the survey seems a bit biased as well:

A minority (37%) of all respondents disagree that human factors are primarily driving global warming – but political affiliation polarizes opinion

Independents align with liberals – with only 30% rejecting the consensus view.

Political views are more telling here than age, as both Under 45 and Over 45 show pluralities believing in human causes.

A minority, 46%, agreed with the consensus. 54% did not agree with the consensus. 37% disagreed and 17% were unsure.

Putting the AGI, AAPG, APEGA surveys together reveals the following:

Climate change primarily driven by human activities

Reject

Unsure

Endorse

Doran & Kendall-Zimmerman

AGI

53%

0%

47%

Lefsfrud & Meyer

APEGA

40%

33%

27%

Seismic Micro-Technology

AAPG

37%

17%

46%

Average

43%

17%

40%

Standard Deviation

9%

17%

11%

Reject so-called consensus 43% (±9%)

Unsure 17% (±17%)

Endorse so-called consensus 40% (±11%)

All three of these surveys were conducted in or around 2008. Lefsfrud & Meyer was a 2013 reanalysis of a 2008 survey.

While ideology certainly appears to be a factor in scientifically literate disagreement with the so-called consensus, geoscientists clearly fall short of 97% in their endorsement of it.

Yet, Dr. Timmer (a molecular biologist and flaming liberal Democrat) dismisses scientifically literate rejection of the so called consensus with quips like, “a little knowledge is a problem” and “for those on the wrong side of an ideological divide, scientific knowledge hurts.” It appears that he would prefer a scientifically illiterate society in which we would all just bow down to “science” and do what we’re told to do.

Conclusion

If scientifically literate conclusions regarding the causes of climate change are primarily driven by political ideology… The climate science is settled: It’s not science.

Actually, no it doesn’t. It was James Ussher who developed a chronology in 1650 using the information he had. His calculations were logically consistent, but of course, the premises have to be true for the conclusion to be true.

If you are a scientist committed to accuracy and integrity, then you should know that your definition of “the Earth” and the Bible’s definition are not even remotely the same.
Who cares what the Bible’s definition is? That has nothing to do with the facts.

Who cares what the Bible’s definition is?.
Well I do, for one, as would anyone who considers a number of posts here which ignorantly or dishonestly equate age estimates of two completely different things in order to impugn the Bible and disparage believers of it.

Sorry, but you’re mistaken. In English and Hebrew, the words for “earth” have mostly the same connotations. In both languages, the word can mean earth, as in, land, soil or ground, or the world upon which we live.

Sorry, but what is ignorant and dishonest is falsely to imagine that the Bible has even the remotest connection with the universe as science has discovered it.

Both testaments are entirely pre-scientific, at best. They are legendary and mythical. It’s a lie, ie a blasphemy against God, to impugn the Creator via the sin of bibliolatry, an insidious form of idolatry. A book written by men is not a sacred idol, but an instance of people trying to comprehend the infinite as best they could 3000 to 2000 years ago. Although its authors ignored the best science then available.

“I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.”

Really, how can you possibly d@ny the fact that the USA dates from July 1776? None of the Founders or even Framers of the Constitution, as shown by its text, doubted that incontrovertible fact.

lsvalgaard ,And what does that buy you? Geologists prospecting for oil would do best in considering the real time.

What does that buy? Not conflating the two different things? A continued healthy respect for the both of them, the science of geology and the truth of the Bible. You get to maintain your scientific integrity and honesty. You are still free to ignore the other.

the truth of the Bible
There is no truth of the Bible. And nothing to respect. The sad thing is that you corrupt the innocent little children with your myths instead of telling them the truth about the magnificent Inverse and the wonder of modern science. Shame on you.

It is also unscientific. I believe there is mention of rainbow in there somewhere. Is that a false claim; would you assert there is no rainbow?

“The sad thing is that you corrupt the innocent little children with your myths”

In what way do you differ? You preach your words as if they are true; and at times it may even be so. I preach to my children words I believe to be true, and at times it is certainly so.

“instead of telling them the truth about the magnificent Inverse and the wonder of modern science.”

Why do you believe these are rival concepts? Perhaps you give your children a subscription to scientific journals for Christmas. Oh, but you don’t do Christmas. No dragons or fairies for your children, no Hogwarts. No music, no art. Just modern science.

IMO actually there is much to respect in the Bible. Among ancient wisdom writings from the Med world, it’s right up there with Hesiod and Homer and the Egyptians, plus with its own Mesopotamian originals.

Just because it has no scientific content doesn’t mean that it’s worthless.

Felix,Both testaments are entirely pre-scientific, at best. They are legendary and mythical….

You and I seem to have different Bibles.

According to a highly respected person (as recorded in John 17:17), God’s word is truth. The same fellow frequently quoted the the scriptures of the old testament. The same scriptures were apparently dictated to holy men of God by God himself in a manner similar to that described in minute detail in Jeremiah, chapter 36.

Now whose written word do you think has more credibility? Yours or his?

FWIW, in more than 35 years of study, I’ve not found a work more mathematically exact nor scientifically correct than the same word he referred to. It is astonishing in its breadth and depth. That is not Bible worship, it’s respect and appreciation for the Author.

I’ve been a scientist too for much of the same period for the same reasons. His creation is totally awesome in all respects.

the wonder of modern science
Which has not and will never have a solution or cure for that which ails us all, mortality.

Nor will science ever satisfy the thirst of someone who’s hungry, and thirsty for love, joy, peace, and many other invisible things, including life.

Perhaps science is not that wonderful after all. It is quite fun, though, and helps to pass the time. We get to make a living, help our fellow man, and give thanks to the Creator. It is the holy scriptures, the Bible, which details a unique and lively solution to our biggest problem. That is what it claims. Perhaps it is worth at least a diligent investigation by honest people.

Which has not and will never have a solution or cure for that which ails us all, mortality.
Mortality is a cornerstone of mother nature. Just image that Trump was immortal and president for life.
Mortality is good and necessary. It is not an ailment.
Now, there are very rich people who are working on their immortality, so perhaps that ‘problem’ will be cured in the near so distant future.

Nor will science ever satisfy the thirst of someone who’s hungry, and thirsty for love, joy, peace, and many other invisible things, including life.
Up to now, religion has been the main cause of untold millions of people not enjoying all those things. And is still at play, e.g. in the Middle East.

lsvalgaard asserts: “Up to now, religion has been the main cause of untold millions of people not enjoying all those things.”

I hope to live long enough for someone, anyone, to support this frequently encountered claim. Maybe you are that person but the odds are against you. What is “religion” that it has this grand power to not do things? What can possibly be gleaned from the word, when it includes celebration of combat (ancient Scandinavian religions) or denounces it (Christianity); when it might or might not have a God, might or might not have structure and hierarchy, might or might not have life after death.

It seems clear to me that religion is the principle power behind the existence of civilization; it is a shared belief in something that endures beyond the lifetime of the current king; it provides social values that are absolutely essential to forming a civilization.

Re. Adams, you’re right that his proclamation reflects conventional Christianity rather than deism, but please read the correspondence between John and Abigail Adams and Thomas Jefferson. It’s clear that the Adamses were Unitarians.

There is no evidence in the Bible that it was dictated by God. In John 17:17, that’s the human author talking, not God. Scripture is allegedly “inspired” by God, not dictated, as was supposedly the case with the Koran.

Although it’s a forgery written by someone other than Paul, to whom it’s attributed. this passage (2 Timothy 3:16-17) tells Christians how to regard “Scripture”, which at that time meant the OT:

“Scripture which is inspired by God is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”

Note that no claim is made that “Scripture” accurately describes nature or the creation of the universe.

The phrase “γραφὴ θεόπνευστος” literally means “God-breathed writing”. It doesn’t say “God-spoken”. “Inspired” is a good Latinate translation of “breathed”.

How you can read the Bible and imagine that it accurately describes the universe is beyond me. In the Bible, the Earth is flat and immobile, covered by a solid dome (“raqiya” in Hebrew) and the Sun and Moon pass over it. The stars are a singing heavenly host, in danger of falling to the ground from where they hang suspended from the dome (firmament or vault of heaven). God personally opens the storehouses of rain, snow and other precipitation, which He keeps above the dome.

The Sun was created after day, night, the Earth and plants. Earth isn’t a spherical planet surrounded by empty space, but a rectangle or disk of land surrounded by and floating on waters, to include above the dome. It makes no scientific sense whatsoever.

Correction. Earth doesn’t float in the Bible. It rests on pillars, which is why its foundation can’t be moved.

So there must be something firm under the waters below on which the pillars can rest. I don’t think that how this works is spelled out in the Bible.

1 Samuel 2:8

He raises the poor from the dust, He lifts the needy from the ash heap To make them sit with nobles, And inherit a seat of honor; For the pillars of the earth are the LORD’S, And He set the world on them.

Psalm 75:3

When the earth and all its people quake, it is I who hold its pillars firm.

Psalm 104:5-9

5He set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved. 6You covered it with the watery depths as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. 7But at your rebuke the waters fled, at the sound of your thunder they took to flight; 8they flowed over the mountains, they went down into the valleys, to the place you assigned for them. 9You set a boundary they cannot cross; never again will they cover the earth.

Thank you for the lesson. Your instruction provides an excellent illustration how a man can imagine all sorts of things, build misconceptions and preconceptions, then go to the Bible and quote whatever he would like to back up his new world view. The man gets to then impugn and lie about the Bible, disparage believers, and hold himself out as some great one. Engaging in such activity is both a great indoor as well as outdoor sport practiced by many throughout the centuries, but not by humble men.

In one place you say there is much to respect in the Bible. In others you say it is nothing but a pack of lies, inaccuracies, and forgeries. Jesus Christ himself said that it is truth. The Bible says that God raised him from the dead, and that he is due back sometime soon. I wonder who I should believe…

In Hebrews 11:6, it is declaredBut without faith [believing] it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Since God, the Creator, is invisible, I cannot seek or find him via the sciences even though they all attest to his presence as well as his inestimable grace and loving kindness. There is not a single man born who is built in such a way that he can see God. Therefore, this God would have to reveal himself if he wanted to make himself known in more detail. The holy scriptures claim themselves to serve that beneficial purpose.

dkfm – can you describe your god? Where is it? Where does it come from? What did it do for billions of years before the Earth? Does it have parents and grandparents or anything like that? because we read that it was the parent of a son.
The reason I ask is because you probably know that the Jewish God concept changed for centuries, gods of creation and war gods and a judging god. The writings were authorized and compiled and safeguarded because they could guide and organize (manipulate) the people in their group. This was important for their survival.
The changing morality of the god concept back then is different than our morality today, but religious people think of our morality as being from God. That’s curious to me.
I need to believe in God like you do, but mine is a scientific, wholistic concepual metaphor.

I am not his travel agent. He could be anywhere. He could be sitting next to you right now.

“Where does it come from?”

That’s a rather nebulous question. for instance, where did *I* come from has many answers, probably infinite, depending on which moment in time is “from” and the context of the question. Among Americans it often means one’s place of birth, the answer to which can have significance and create assumptions. In the case that God wasn’t born on Earth, giving his birthplace a name is not going to be particularly useful.

“What did it do for billions of years before the Earth?”

Pretty much what he is doing now and will do after the Earth has been evaporated by its star. Making more earths, see what develops.

“Does it have parents and grandparents or anything like that?”

Probably. The one sure thing about life is that it makes more life.

“religious people think of our morality as being from God.”

There is no “our” and nothing is common to all “religious people”. It is certainly true that my morality stems at least in part from my understanding of God. Without a god, your morality and mine will differ with no authority to say which is *correct*.

“I need to believe in God like you do, but mine is a scientific, wholistic concepual metaphor.”

Then that is your god; having no idea as to the wrongness of wrongs or the rightness of right, confined to things like pi and G.

MIR,I need to believe in God like you do, but mine is a scientific, wholistic concepual metaphor.

I’m pretty sure a metaphor did not create the heavens and the earth of Genesis 1:1 :)

can you describe your god?

I’ve yet to meet a man or a woman who did not have a god. For many, it is their own belly. For others it is mother nature and even death. It seems silly to me to worship the creation instead of the Creator, no matter how beautiful a form the creation takes. Your metaphor and you are part of the creation. So is anything scientifically discoverable or arrived at solely through human reasoning or intellect.

That does not mean we can’t apply the principles of common sense, logic, reasoning, and even scientific analysis to the Bible and God, but we should do so under his terms and not our own.

Still others worship they know not what. In Athens, there was an alter to “the Unknown God” whom Paul was able to espouse upon in Acts, chapter 17 (Paul was ostensibly a holy man of God).
He said:

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;
Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;
And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:
For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device.
And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent:
Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.

That seems like a good place to start. Read the whole chapter for complete context. Apparently there is only one, true God. Your ignorance has been winked at. If you work honestly and diligently, you can be like the Bereans mentioned earlier:

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

dkfm – you’re inferring (if not asserting) that you have the right book of descriptions and answers.

What if you’re wrong?

I remember this from an email I received;

What if you’re in the wrong tradition? and God asks you, “why did you idolize the claims of this tradition or that? Your upbringing? Some fear-mongering along the way? I gave you a brain. You had many modern converging lines of evidence. Old books were for old tribes. I wanted more for you.”

meteorologist in research asks “What if you’re in the wrong tradition?”

What-if questions tend to be impossible to answer. If you are in the wrong tradition the consequences then depend on which one is the correct tradition. As there be many thus also many possible answers.

It is answered by Pascal’s Wager extended to cover more than a simple binary possibility. You aim for the best possible future while avoiding the worst possible mistake.

OR you can simply know something that settles the question and makes all this arguing entirely unnecessary (for oneself, that is). It is not possible to know there is no god of any kind anywhere in the universe but it *is* possible to know one if you’ve met one.

MIR,you’re inferring [sic] (if not asserting) that you have the right book of descriptions and answers.
What if you’re wrong … and God asks you…

Okay, I’ll bite. I’m going to assume your questions are honest ones even though you put them in the mouth of God (which is pretty ridiculous).

I gave you a brain.

Indeed, a little intellect, and more importantly, free will. Having both imply that the Creator made me capable and responsible to make my own investigation and decision regarding all these matters. Having these implies inalienable rights (maybe there are more) inherent in each individual, given by God. Wow, he must think pretty highly of me and you!

You had many modern converging lines of evidence.

Evidence of what? A scientific metaphor? All the evidence I’ve seen of every “high” art, philosophy, and religion is that the end of those things is death. I despise death. I devoted a large portion of my short life to those things. They all suck. And there is nothing new under the sun in those things that is not a “modern” rehashing of some stupid speculation from times past. That’s my experience.

If you are still investigating those things, have at it. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die” say the Epicureans. Or “que sera, que sera, whatever will be, will be” sings Doris Day, “and there is not a damn thing you can do about it” say the Stoics. But if there were a promise of something better, as you suggest (“I wanted more for you”), it has to address the problem of death.

All the evidence I see in God’s creation testifies to an always alive, loving, gracious, kind, and good God. When I finally got to the Bible and was able to read and understand it, I found out that the God of the Bible was exactly the same God who left himself a testimony in the creation, all over the place, anywhere you might look.

Starting with just a view of the natural world, I think one could begin to make a list of qualifications of a God worth following, imitating, or worshipping. Life, love, grace, kindness, goodness ought to be included based on the evidence.

In like manner as a list of qualifications, I think one can make a list of rules by which one can read and understand the Bible if it were, indeed, the word of God. The list of rules would have to start with an assumption – “The word of God is.” Just assume, and then be *very* careful and honest in handling it in case the Scriptures turn out to be, in fact or in truth, the word of God. Hardly anyone does this.

Old books were for old tribes. I wanted more for you.

Please tell me what is a better promise than this one from Jesus Christ in John 10:10:

The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.

dkfm – reading the Bible with what we know today? From what we know about its history, from what we know about the psychology of humans and superstitious people over 20 centuries ago. And of course, from what science has discovered.. Supernatural events? and promises of more from so long ago. You have faith in the Bible ‘logic’.

You have faith. I have faith too, in what’s repeatable and verifiable.

It’s not a case of my word v. that of the authors of the Bible. It’s all the evidence in the world v. their words, which not only lack any supporting evidence, but are contrary to observed reality and irreconcilably contradict each other over and over again.

You state: “FWIW, in more than 35 years of study, I’ve not found a work more mathematically exact nor scientifically correct than the same word he referred to. It is astonishing in its breadth and depth. That is not Bible worship, it’s respect and appreciation for the Author.”

Please point out the “mathematically exact and scientifically correct” passages you’ve found in the Bible. Thanks!

Michael 2 – I’d have to write a chapter in here if you don’t understand how weather systems predictably form and then dissipate. The phenomena repeat and repeat and the predictions are verified every day. The synoptic configurations are always the same and this is part of what makes it a science, in addition to all the purely numerical approaches. What do you want to know? or do you already know a lot about it?

Several sources over the years. There may be some evolution in that number. A recent Gallup survey [2017] says 38%, but is likely to a bit too low [some people may not be willing to admit that they are ‘young earthers], but the number is certainly in the right ball park. Wikipedia says:
“A 2012 Gallup survey reported that 46% of Americans believed in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years, a statistic which has remained essentially the same since 1982”
Do I also have to cite a source for the Earth orbiting the sun instead of the other way around?

The numbers speak for themselves. But, perhaps, you are of a different opinion on what orbits what, so I should apologize for offending your beliefs. Some people are really sensitive when it comes to their beliefs.

‘Do I also have to cite a source for the Earth orbiting the sun instead of the other way around?’

You wouldn’t think so… however…
… and just because I HAD to tell this story – some friends and I were coming home from a local fair – all of us college educated – and to avoid traffic getting onto the Interstate, we tried to sneak around the main drive, which took us into the surrounding hills, where we promptly got lost.
I pointed to the rising moon, and said, “well, that’s gotta be east.’
I (who was actually the odd man out here – with one mutual friend and a bunch of HIS buddies) was told how it was the SUN that rose in the east , not the moon.
When I objected, I was furthermore told how the EARTH orbits around the SUN, and the MOON orbits around the EARTH.
I tried to explain that day and night are not created by either of those two orbits – that would be a year and a month, respectively – and that day and night are created by the rotation of the Earth on its axis – which is why all celestial bodies always come from the same direction.
Didn’t seem to matter – I suppose there might have been a bit of an alcohol factor, but mostly, I think it was dog-piling on the fifth wheel. I never did get any of them to bend. College educated, remember.
I’ve harkened back to that moment a lot in recent years – one of those things where you know you’re right, but it just doesn’t seem to matter.
Nothing to do but roll your eyes, I guess. Maybe it’s just living in Oregon.

There is a massive difference between people who stick with their religious belief that God created man/woman and those that rigidly believe the Earth is slightly over 4,000 years old.
That Earth’s age claim is not in the bible, nor is it official dogma.

Allegedly, a priest added up ages and dates to come up with the alleged age of the Earth.
While religions teach that God made man.

That the bible is full of conflicts is only argued against by fundamentalists. Everyone else accepts that people wrote the bible and that human errors propagate. Which is why those whose still believe God created man, accept that, but allow room for Earth being billions of years old and dinosaurs lived millions of years ago.

The bible does not state when God created Earth.
The bible does not state when God created man/woman.
The bible does not state how long man/woman remained ignorant.
Until the bible reaches Abraham, the bible is general! e.g. Adam means man in the Hebrew language.

Right from the initial creation statements there is a major timeline problem.
God creates light the first day.
God does not create the sun, moon and the stars to shed light onto Earth.

If the sun is not created till the fourth day, how are days measured? Definitely not by Earth/sol solar days. Leaving the time measurement absurd for man’s understanding.
For well over a thousand years, the Torah was exclusively oral tradition.
Along the way, writing developed, papyrus and lambskin held Torah portions, Israel got depopulated and the oral tradition morphed into the written Torah.

I’ve lived and worked in a number of areas across the United States. Including areas where fundamentalist churches were active.
That claim for 35% and 45% of America’s population believing the Earth is very young is totally bogus.

People are welcome to observe their personal choices of religion and believe what books they choose.
That does not allow or forgive charlatans who ask silly questions, then twist or demote the answers to fit other messages.

It is easy for people attending fundamentalist services to accept religious teachings, yet still function fully in a scientific/business world without conflict.

“Joel Snider May 10, 2018 at 1:42 pm
‘Do I also have to cite a source for the Earth orbiting the sun instead of the other way around?’”

My first response is that you are describing urbanites.

Even the most religious rural folk know which direction the sun/moon rise and where they set. It’s people who never look, that get directions wrong.

Back in college, I made the mistake of visiting with a friend at a table for lunch. Two other people sitting there, his classmates, were born again folks.
The female of the two pretty well disagreed with everything stated; especially when the table started discussion anatomy and human chemistry.

After the lady’s rant slowed up a bit, I tried to explain chemistry to the obviously liberal arts student.
To which she adamantly declared that iron could not be in our blood unless “God willed it”. Her sentence(s) were not that short. I decided to cut and run; I suggested that she needed a super magnet to further enjoy God’s powers.

Another curious phenomena was how our section of the cafeteria emptied of people sitting nearby, very shortly after the lady got loud. Apparently, I did not know with whom I sat down.
My friend? He remembered a class he had to attend when the iron chemistry discussion started.
He was laughing.
Me, I never accepted another lunch invitation from someone at that school.

Irrational people are widespread. Whether they walk along roads talking to themselves and waving their hands, or wear many forms of plastics, waste fuels to stay warm/cool and bleat consensus science?
Their visibility and their noise are far above their numbers.

Hey, all those in the 38% may be right after all, if we really are living in a Plank level simulation in pixelated spacetime. The ‘God’ they talk about is probably some super AI consciousness that exists across all time and decided to switch on a new simulation 10,000 years ago, because something went wrong with it’s 8th dimensional E8 quasicrystal geometry and Golden Ratio packing of tetrahedra. Who’s to know and should we really care?

The Constitution isn’t godless. By dating the US from the Declaration of Independence, it recognizes adoption of a Deist document as the founding event.

“Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth.”

The Bill of Rights requires religious toleration and outlaws an established (state-supported) church, but isn’t godless. It allows worship of any and all gods or none, as long as human sacrifice or other crimes aren’t part of the service. But our founding document derives human rights from a Creator.

42 is 101010 in binary code, that light refracts through a water surface by 42 degrees to create a rainbow, that light requires 10−42 seconds to cross the diameter of a proton. Adams rejected them all as an explanation but…….

Off topic or is it? Was he right? Spooky action at a distance, whaaat?

Judging by the fact that most of the comments have been off topic… So… 42 and derivations thereof are, by definition, on topic. And… Sooky Action at a Distance (quantum entanglement) is part of every topic… 👽

Felix, you’re right about the Declaration of Independence, but the Deist god is not the Judeo-Christian deity. It is a distant something-or-other that does not involve itself in worldly affairs.

The Declaration refers rights originating in “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” But no one can know the mind (or existence) of god or that god’s laws. Rights are therefore necessarily derived from the freedoms of nature as the sole observable basis for them.

The Constitution is the foundational document of the Republic, not the Declaration. The Declaration asserts the right of people to remove themselves to freedom given a despotic government. It establishes no polity.

The Constitution does not mention or rely on a god at all. Free people are asserted to the right to form their own government, without reference to deity (We, the People…).

Given the reference to nature, one can more credibly make a secular than a sacred argument for individual freedom and equal rights.

I think we can share a gladness that both the political philosophy underlying the Republic and the Bill of Rights have no place for an enforced collectivism. It’s a state very worth protecting.

The Constitution itself shows that the Declaration is the foundational document, as I demonstrated by quoting the Constitution itself. The Constitution has changed constantly since 1787, from amendments and court decisions, so in any case can’t be our founding document. The Declaration stands at the top of the US Code, followed by the Articles of Confederation and the various federal laws passed by the government under those articles, such as the NW Ordinance.

Whatever you might think is the origin of human rights, in the Declaration, it’s the Creator, Nature and Nature’s God, Who endows us with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness (eg property). A number of Supreme Court justices adhere to the doctrine of natural rights, based upon Jefferson’s words.

Actually, many deists did believe that their god intervened in human history, to include the Adams family, and all the other deist Founders who thanked God Almighty for their providential victory over Britain and freedom.

The key feature distinguishing deism from orthodox Christianity is the issue of the divinity of Christ, not whether the Deity intervenes in human affairs. Opinions on that differed among deists, of course. Deism is almost Judaism. As a Unitarian, Newton was a kind of deist.

Felix, the Revolutionary War was fought under the Articles of Confederation. Under that document, every state was sovereign and independent. There was no United States as we understand it, nor as understood by any of the founders, until after adoption of the Constitution.

The United States existed after all the states ratified the Constitution and elected to join the Union.

Given no US prior to the Constitution and US in existence with it, there just isn’t any doubt but that the Constitution is the foundational document of the US.

Here is a short article about Washington and his deism. It’s quite clear that “providence” meant the manner in which the deist god had arranged the universe. It did not imply direct intervention.

Deism also has no connection to the Bible, to the Tanach, or to any purported revelation. It is not almost Judaism, and rejects all the supernaturalistic claims of Christianity, including the divinity of Jesus.

Deism finds its way to ethics through reason. If it is close to anything, it is to Humanism — just retaining a tenuous grasp on the inchoate.

Sorry, but there is no doubt, not the least little bit, that the Declaration created the United States.

The Constitution, in its original form, merely changed the relationship between the states and federal government. The subsequent 27 amendments and numerous court cases changed that relationship further.

No legitimate historian or legal scholar doubts that the US was founded by the Declaration, least of all the US government itself, which recognized July 4, 1776 as the date on which the USA was founded. How can anyone possibly imagine otherwise? It’s contrary to all historical and legal fact.

Do you seriously argue that all the statutes passed under the Articles of Confederation, under which the vast majority of states was organized, aren’t valid law?

Felix, it’s a historical fact that the United States did not exist prior to the ratification of the Constitution.

An argument resting on unnamed historical scholars is an argument from authority and ambiguity, both.

Any scholar arguing your point does so in the face of the falsifying historical fact that the US did not exist prior to ratification.

It matters not a whit that the Constitution has been amended since it was first ratified. The amendments were made under the rules of the Constitution itself. Such amendments to not vitiate the historical relevance of the document.

The Declaration of Independence did not establish a polity. The US as a state cannot date from a non-establishing document.

The US accepts common law valid precedent. That has no significance as regards originating dates.

It’s beyond me how anyone can possibly d@ny the undeniable fact that the United State of America was established by the Declaration. Please explain why the Constitution itself dates the USA from July 1776, and why the US government also recognizes July 4, 1776 as Independence Day and the birthday of the USA.

As I’ve said before, the US Code also recognizes the Declaration (which stands at its head) and all acts of Congress under the Articles of Confederation as US law. It is simply perverse, if not indeed perverted, to d@ny the incontrovertible fact that the Declaration established the USA. Many Supreme Court rulings cite the Declaration.

The Articles of Confederation were the first constitution of the USA. The 1787 constitution has been constantly altered. Did we have a new country after each amendment and court decision changing that constitution?

Please cite US law supporting your clearly false assertion that the Constitution founded the USA, contrary to all history and law. Are you aware that not only the US government, but no USSC decision has ever supported your clearly wrong spin?

PS: And as for the Founders’ concept of Providence and an Almighty God Who intervenes in human affairs, please read the Unitarian (Deist) proclamation (Executive Order) of second president John Adams, “Recommending a National Day of Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer”:

Not just Jefferson’s words, but those of his fellow independence committee members and the whole Continental Congress, the first government of the USA, agreed with the doctrine of Natural Rights, endowed by the Creator.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

Even the arch-anticlerical Madison wanted to incorporate the preamble of the Declaration into the Constitution, but it was felt unnecessary, because the Declaration was then, as now, recognized as the foundational document of our republic.

Only blatant revisionism can possibly question this inalienable historical fact.

Felix, how hard is it to notice the Declaration of Independence is not the foundation of a state or a government? All one need do is read it.

Here is the Declaration. Show me where in the Declaration there is any mention of a state formed, founded, legislated, or instituted.

Look at the title: “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America”

The “united” is lower case. “States” is upper case. The title expresses that thirteen separate States are united in declaring their freedom. Thirteen States. Not one State.

Look at the final paragraph: “We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America….”

Notice that “united” is again not capitalized, but “States” is. That paragraph is a statement of alliance among independent states, not of a single state.

Later in the same paragraph: “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; … they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”

Note that: “*they* have full power” to wage war, etc. Not *it* has full power. The text says that each colonial state has the full power of a sovereign nation. There is no sign whatever in the Declaration of any notion of the United States as a single nation, or of the United States (as opposed to united States) at all.

Its language is consistent only with an alliance among thirteen independent and sovereign nations.

In Paulson and Paulson, “The Constitution: an introduction,” page 6 (paper), “Consider the Declaration of Independence itself. It was adopted by the Second Continental Congress as the “Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.””

The authors go on to note the significance of the lower-case “united.” It indicates the declaration of thirteen independent separate and sovereign states. Not of the United States.

Page 19: “Second, Madison argued, the Articles of Confederation was, legally speaking, more like a treaty — an alliance — of thirteen separate countries. It was not the true constitution of government for a single nation.”

Page 21: “What kind of government did [the Constitution] establish? Benjamin Franklin, when asked this question by a citizen on the streets of Philadelphia shortly after the Constitutional Convention, is reported to have said, “A Republic, if you can keep it.””

It could be no more obvious that the US came into existence with the Constitution.

No law can establish the Constitution as the foundational document of law, because all US laws are subservient to the Constitution. No inferior body can assign the existence of the superior.

Finally, here at the US National Archives Q&A, look at the answer under Q. When did the United States government go into operation under the Constitution?

In the middle of that answer, “On March 3, 1789, the old Confederation went out of existence and on March 4 the new government of the United States began legally to function, according to a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States (wings v. Speed, 5 Wheat. 420); … But it was not until February 2, 1790, that the Supreme Court, as head of the third branch of the government, organized and, held its first session; so that is the date when our government under the Constitution became fully operative.” (my bold).

Post what you like Felix. You’ve got no case, no matter your use of lurid language.

Where I would disagree with you is that Article VI of the Constitution provided for a continuation of government, in keeping the debts and “engagements” of the Confederation valid. Where I agree with you was that the form of what the US government was changed, from a federation to a union.

Felix, how hard is it to realize that the Declaration of Independence is not the foundation of a state or a government? All one need do is read it.

Here is the Declaration. Show me where in the Declaration there is any mention of a state formed, founded, legislated or instituted.

Look at the title: “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America”

The “united” is lower case. “States” is upper case. It expresses that thirteen separate States are united in declaring their freedom. Thirteen States. Not one State.

Look at the final paragraph: “We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America….” Notice that “united” is again not capitalized, but “States” is. That paragraph is a statement of alliance among independent states, not of a single state.

Later in the same paragraph: “That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; … they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”

Note that: “*they* have full power” to wage war, etc. Not *it* has full power. The text says that each colonial state has the full power of a sovereign nation. There is no sign whatever in the Declaration of any notion of the United States as a single nation, or of the United States (as opposed to united States) at all.

In Paulson and Paulson, “The Constitution: an introduction,” page 6 (paper), “Consider the Declaration of Independence itself. It was adopted by the Second Continental Congress as the “Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America.””

The authors go on to note the significance of the lower-case “united.” It indicates the declaration of thirteen independent separate and sovereign states. Not of the United States.

Page 19: “Second, Madison argued, the Articles of Confederation was, legally speaking, more like a treaty — an alliance — of thirteen separate countries. It was not the true constitution of government for a single nation.”

Page 21: “What kind of government did [the Constitution] establish? Benjamin Franklin, when asked this question by a citizen on the streets of Philadelphia shortly after the Constitutional Convention, is reported to have said, “A Republic, if you can keep it.””

It could be no more obvious that the US came into existence with the Constitution.

No law can establish the Constitution as the foundational document of law, because all US laws are subservient to the Constitution. No inferior body can assign the existence of the superior.

Finally, here at the US National Archives Q&A, look at the answer under Q. When did the United States government go into operation under the Constitution?

In the middle of that answer, “On March 3, 1789, the old Confederation went out of existence and on March 4 the new government of the United States began legally to function, according to a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States (wings v. Speed, 5 Wheat. 420); … But it was not until February 2, 1790, that the Supreme Court, as head of the third branch of the government, organized and, held its first session; so that is the date when our government under the Constitution became fully operative.” (my bold).

Post what you like Felix. You’ve got no case, no matter your use of lurid language.

The whole point of the document is the formation a new, independent nation, as should be obvious from its words and title.

Eighteenth century capitalization was not standardized, so signifies nothing. The Congress of the Confederation was formally referred to as the United States in Congress Assembled, with “United” capitalized. It replaced the Second Continental Congress in 1781, under the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. Thus, the Constitution when adopted in 1787 and went into effect in 1789 was the third federal governmental system of the nation of the United States of America. It has changed repeatedly over the decades.

The US Constitution, as I showed, recognizes the United States Declaration of Independence as our founding document. The US government has done so ever since 1776. We celebrated our centennial in 1876 and bicentennial in 1976, not in 1887 or ’89 and 1987 or ’89.

The Declaration stands at the head of the US Code. Laws passed by Congress under the Articles of Confederation are also in the US Code. I’m repeating myself, so I guess there is no persuading you.

Of course, you’re free to disagree with the law of the land and historical fact, but you should know that the US government, legal specialists and historians beg to differ.

I should add that not only the executive and legislative branches of the US government regard the Declaration as our founding document, as in Founding Fathers and Signers. But so too does the US Supreme Court.

John Hancock (in his capacity as president of the Second Continental Congress) and James Madison both considered it to be, in Madison’s words, “the fundamental Act of Union of these States.” Reflecting that view, Congress has placed it at the head of the United States Code, under the caption, “The Organic Laws of the United States of America.”

The Supreme Court has accorded it binding legal force, for example, in resolving questions of alienage (Inglis v. Trustees of Sailor’s Snug Harbour, 1830). Before the Civil War, there was debate as to whether it made secession legal or not.

The history of USSC opinions shows many examples of the Court using the Declaration of Independence to bolster all manner of legal claims, from the content of due process to the nature of the right to a jury trial. There’s a great article outlining the use of the Declaration by Charles H. Cosgrove in the 1998 University of Richmond Law Review (32 U. Rich. L. Rev. 107).

It is used as a legal document marking the creation of the United States. See, e.g., Shanks v. Dupont, 28 U.S. 242 (1830).

Also, under international law, the Declaration has legal force insofar as customary international law is concerned, and is cited for those purposes.

So it’s an open and shut case that the Declaration of Independence is the founding document of the USA. It not only declared the USA an independent country, but embodies our basic ideological, political, legal and economic policy.

Throughout, the judgment treats South Carolina and the other states as independent and sovereign, including after the Declaration of Independence.

I’ll put the most unambiguous proof first.

From the judgment (bolding mine): “Until the adoption of the federal Constitution, titles to land and the laws of allegiance were exclusively subjects of state cognizance. Up to the time, therefore, when this descent was cast upon the mother, the State of South Carolina was supreme and uncontrollable on the subject now before us.

“By the adoption of the Constitution, the power of the states in this respect was subjected to some modification.”

The mentioned descent was “cast upon the mother” in 1782, well after the Declaration of Independence, but 6 years before ratification of the Constitution.

It’s very clear that Shanks vs. Dupont which you cited to support your case, in fact definitively and finally refutes your case.

Further: “Thomas Scott, a native of South Carolina, died in 1782 … Ann Scott was born in South Carolina before the American revolution, and her father adhered to the American cause and remained and was at his death a citizen of South Carolina.”

The reason the court named Thomas Scott a citizen of South Carolina at his death in 1782, and not named a citizen of the US, is that the Constitution was not ratified until 1788. There was no US in 1782.

The court’s description of Scott’s citizenship being of South Carolina at death is based upon that very fact. In 1782, South Carolina was an independent and sovereign state.

Further, “The marriage of Ann Scott with Shanks, a British officer, did not change or destroy her allegiance to the State of South Carolina”

“During the war, each party claimed the allegiance of the natives of the colonies as due exclusively to itself. The American states insisted upon the allegiance of all born within the states respectively, and Great Britain asserted an equally exclusive claim.

In that quote the court recognized the states as equal in standing with Great Britain, a sovereign nation.

“All those, whether natives or otherwise, who then adhered to the American states were virtually absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown. All those who then adhered to the British Crown were deemed and held subjects of that Crown. The treaty of peace was a treaty operating between the states on each side, and the inhabitants thereof; in the language of the seventh article, it was a firm and perpetual peace between his Britannic majesty and the said states,”

“The objection to their inheriting is that they are aliens, not born in allegiance to the State of South Carolina, in which the land lies.”

Yet again, allegiance is rested in the State of South Carolina. Not in the US.

The case against your position could not be more clear.

As noted above, Shanks vs. Dupont, which you cited to support your case, in fact definitively and finally refutes your case.

Mr Frank, what you are ignoring (deliberately?) is the 14th Amendment, intended in part to settle that issue. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside”.
Jefferson Davis’ interpretation of the status of states v. the Federal government was settled by a war and an amendment.

You were playing on the old states rights theme, but the only difference was between when the US became a country and when the current government system was started. If the first, 1776, if the second, 1788.

David and lsval: Looks like the poll has 38% believing God created man in present form, and says NOTHING about how old the 38% believe the earth to be. Am I missing something? Does this poll simply ratify what you already believe? About Americans, lief? Is your conservative Christian neighbor an American? I did not know the 2 of you were so prejudiced, will have to take that into account. So lief’s sun stuff, which seemed impressive, may be a lot of hooey that just fits what he already believed. Anyone not blinded by bias can see that the poll doesn’t say what you purport, and the wording of category 3 becomes a “default” for those who don’t believe humans developed over “millions” of years. How is it you can’t see the log in your own eye?

How is it you can’t see the log in your own eye?
The concepts are connected, see e.g.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Earth_creationism
It does not seem to me that you can meaningfully separate question of the age of the earth from when humans arrived on the scene.

lsval: Putting aside that the words “in the last 10,000 years” were not on the chart (what’s up with that? Guess we’ll just have to trust Wiki & gallup) there’s only one reason you decided to rely on it- it “did not seem to you” to question it, because it fit what already “seemed to you” to be true about american religious. Well, americans have been merciful enough to suffer us religious and not slaughter us in religious wars. You’re from europe, right? Really wanna go there, doc?

<iamericans have been merciful enough to suffer us religious and not slaughter us in religious wars
What’s your problem? You think racial and civil wars and extermination of indians [“the olnly god indian is a dead indian”] are better?

My problem is with top(?!) european scientists who fail to see how elitism leads him to the same attitude as white supremicist 19th century american indian fighters. And he forgets history! A. American civil war(s)-1; European civil wars-too many to count. B. American “race” war(s)-0 as in zero; european race wars-does the holoc@ust count? American elimination of natives-1; european elimination of a race-see A and B.
So I see I’m tarring you with the holoc@ust, so I need to relax. Think about your broad tar brush much?

The Civil War was to end slavery, no matter that it was also to preserve the union, and carries no shame.

Native Americans massacred and cannibalized one another. The French were at the same time oppressing southeast Asians, the Belgians were going into the Congo, the Germans in East Africa, and the Brits had still got hold of India.

Meanwhile the 19th century Swedes were oppressing the Sami people (pdf) and so religiously intolerant as to remove children from secular parents.

The behavior of some Americans was no different than morality generally prevailing elsewhere at the time. There is no singling out America for opprobrium in that global moral context. Exceptionalism is not what everyone does. It is in what is done differently.

Calling out the execrable behavior of some Americans does not reflect on the exceptionalism of an explicitly secular society built on the notion of freedom for all. No matter the difficulty in rising to the challenge of the Constitution, the fact that Americans struggle to do so is exceptional in itself.

If you find America so repulsive, why haven’t you gone back to Denmark, land of the Norse raiders, invaders and slave traders?

Nothing happened on the territory of the US that hasn’t occurred far worse in the Old World and Latin America. Religious, ideological and ethnic wars far more terrible than anything which happened here occurred in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and South America.

Leif, 19th century America were only half a century from being Europeans. Surely the founders of America spoke with a British accent. The Constitution has a decidely educated British language. Napoleon sold the “Louisiana Purchase” in early 19th Century which doubled the size of the US. The Micmac Indians in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia were all but exterminated by essentially the British (Newfoundland didn’t join Canada until 1949. The Spanish wiped out the Incas, Aztecs, were the seat of the Spanish Inquisition. The Germans exterminated 6M Jews plus Gypsies and the like. I guess the Vikings did their share, too. America indeed is exceptional. Possibly the faction that believes the Earth is only 4000 years old are in America because they ARE the world’s most generous and freedom loving people (at least until the lefty elites began deconstruction of the US economy and its Constitution because they wanted to join in the cultural, intellectual and economic ruin perfected by Europeans). You know and all Europeans know and hate that the world would be doomed without the economic and scientific engine of the US. Disclaimer: I’m not American.

While Europe was still ruled by inbred dunces, America was led by people who had actually accomplished things.

Two of drafters of the Declaration of Independence were scientists, Franklin and Jefferson. Also popular writers, a publisher and planter. The other three, Adams, Livingston and Sherman, were farmers and lawyers, with distinguished careers.

Without America, there would be no freedom anywhere in the world. It would be dominated only by Communism and Fascism.

Good for Gary P. and Felix finishing this off. Lsval jumped away , apparently seeing a chance to be obnoxious to Javier on another thread and just couldn’t resist. He seems to have no idea how much this tossed-off crack diminishes him in the eyes of people like me.

In WWII, the US suffered more military deaths than the UK (and a lot more wounded), but, obviously, Britain obviously sustained more civilian casualties and fatalities. Britain would have been starved into submission by the U-boats without US Lend Lease and “neutrality” patrols before we officially entered the war. We also repaired RN ships damaged in the Atlantic and Med, getting them back into action during 1939-41. Not neutral at all.

FDR sent USN battleships into the Lant in hopes that German subs would attack them, giving him a cause for war. In the event, H!tler did us a big favor by declaring war on us after the IJN attack on Hawaii. He miscalculated that he could win the Battle of the Atlantic thanks to the US’ having to fight a two-front war. And indeed, his subs did enjoy a second Happy Time, off the American East Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico. But then we convoyed and blacked out our cities, diverted B-25s from the West Coast for sub patrols, and eventually built escort carriers to close the Greenland Gap and built British-invented centimetric radars, winning the battle and the war.

Churchill knew that Britain was saved by Pearl Harbor (which he knew was coming, as the RN had broken IJN codes). Both allies needed each other. The cooperation extended to the atomic bomb project (both contingents were riddled with Soviet spies),

The USSR of course suffered the most death and destruction, but Stalin was to blame for it all. Until 1941, he was allied with H!tler. He deployed his forces in offensive rather than defensive positions, planning to attack Germany in 1942. But his erstwhile ally beat him to the punch. Stalin didn’t expect invasion in 1941 because his spies told him (correctly) that Germany wasn’t preparing for a winter campaign. H!tler’s lack of readiness inadvertently fooled his fellow totalitarian dictator.

Sorge in Japan had however warned Stalin about impending invasion, so the Generalissimo heeded his spy’s advice late in the year that he could move his winter-equipped and trained Siberian divisions safely to the rescue of Moscow. Sorge’s contacts were so good that he was sure Japan wasn’t going to attack the USSR again, but this time the USA.

But, as noted, the USSR couldn’t have made it to Berlin without US and UK aid. Among the civilian Allied dead are the brave merchant mariners who perished on the Murmansk run. We sent so many trucks and other materiel (tanks, planes, radar, ammo, steel, petrol, rubber, boot leather, Spam, you name it) to Russia that our own advances in Western Europe were slowed down and losses increased.

However much Dr. S. might know about solar physics, his historical data base is sorely lacking. And it appears his judgement blinded by ideology and prejudice.

However much Dr. S. might know about solar physics, his historical data base is sorely lacking/i>
And what has that to do with solar activity? Nothing.
As far as the WWWII is concerned: The Russians have many more million war-deaths than the Allied, and Germany bled itself to death by having a two-front war. If the Russians had not sustained the Eastern front Germany would probably have won. So, thank the USSR.

1) Without the USA, the USSR could not have defeated Germany. At best, there would have been a stalemate along one of the river lines.

2) The USA would have defeated Germany without any help from the USSR because we had the Bomb. Berlin, Munich, Hamburg and other German cities would have been destroyed even more thoroughly than they were by Bomber Command and the Eighth Air Force.

The A-bomb program was started to defeat Germany, not Japan. Lancaster bombers could carry the early bombs, but more likely B-29s based in Britain would have dropped them. For that matter, we were developing intercontinental bombers, capable of reaching Germany from North America. That program was put on hold to speed B-29 development, but had we not entered the war in 1941, B-36 would soon have become available. Most likely it would have operated from Iceland rather than Canada or the US, at least for three seasons of the year.

Getting into alternate history is interesting, but not anything one can ever settle. There were so many things going on in the period, making a few changes here and there would make a difference.
Without the Soviet involvement, the war would have gone on much longer, but the Soviets minimised the importance of the aid they received from the UK and the US. Much of the Red Army’s motor transport was made in the US, as a point.

You overlook the fact that the US was keeping Britain in the war all during 1939-41 thanks to Lend Lease and all the other aid programs, to include fighting U-boats, which made its survival possible
And you overlook the fact that had the Germans not been so stupid to invade the USSR, they could simply ignore the Lend Lease and invade with overwhelming force by 1942. The Russians might even have helped as they did in Poland, as they would be happy to see a Western Democracy go down in flames.

You really ought to study military history before presuming to comment upon it.

Germany could not have invaded Britain in 1942 in overwhelming force, precisely because of Lend Lease. Germany couldn’t cross the Channel with enough force to conquer Britain as it had done France because the Royal Navy barred the way, backed up by the RAF and of course what was left of the British Army. All these forces benefited from US aid even before December 1941 and would have gotten even more in 1942.

Germany lacked amphibious ships and all the other specialized naval vessels required for a landing in strength, not to mention sufficient warships to guard the invasion fleet. With airborne divisions, a beachhead could have been at least temporarily secured, but the main force would have needed to capture a port intact, due to lack of across the beach landing craft.

Operation Sea Lion was just as doomed to failure in 1942 as in 1940, even with all the divisions sacrificed on the Eastern Front. And Stalin would have stabbed his ally H!tler in the back as soon as the N@zi leader tried to invade Britain. That was Stalin’s plan for 1942 anyway, as his force disposition shows. H!tler saw how badly the Red Army performed against Finland, so assumed that beating Stalin would be easy. And it was for most of 1941. But then Lend Lease saved the USSR as it had the UK.

Germany could not have invaded Britain in 1942 in overwhelming force, precisely because of Lend Lease. Germany couldn’t cross the Channel with enough force to conquer Britain as it had done France because the Royal Navy barred the way,
Germany had enough time to rectify that if they had put their mind to it, but were instead focusing on the East. And were dumb enough to think they could get Britain as an ally against the Russkis. FDR’s America did not want to go to war in Europe.
Contrary to what propaganda you believe in, I actually have solid knowledge of WWWII.

“because of Lend Lease. Germany couldn’t cross the Channel with enough force to conquer Britain as it had done France because the Royal Navy barred the way,”
——-
Response by Leif: “Germany had enough time to rectify that if they had put their mind to it, but were instead focusing on the East. And were dumb enough to think they could get Britain as an ally against the Russkis.”
——–
Look at how large the D-Day invasion fleet was, and how innovative were its Higgins landing boats (which the Germans might not have been aware of then) or Mulberry Harbors. To build a fleet one-fifth that large would have greatly diverted resources from the German air force and subs and tanks, and taken more than two years, no? More important, the RAF was undiminished and was growing and improving in quality rapidly. If an invasion were being prepared, the UK would have switched from bomber production to fighters. Unlike the situation on D-Day, where the allies controled the skies, the RAF would have strafed and bombed everything in sight in any landing site or parachute drop. (The UK had evacuated all citizens within 20 miles of the invasion-likely coast), as well as torpedoing the supporting offshore ships. FDR might well have sent much of the U.S. air force and navy over to assist, regardless of popular sentiment. He was preparing a radio address to get involved in stopping the Japanese invasion fleet heading toward Malay—it was pre-empted by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, so he wouldn’t have hesitated at getting engaged in a much more important issue.

Leif: “FDR’s America did not want to go to war in Europe.”

It had some justification. President. Wilson had tried to engineer a lasting peace in Paris, but Britain and France insisted on a victor’s peace, with predictable results. The isolaionist public said, in effect, “… fool me twice, shame on me.” On top of that, there was a feeling that America’s contribution to WW1 wasn’t appreciated over there. For instance, in 1932 Will Rogers said, “The French couldn’t hate us more than if we helped them out in another war.”

Please realize that there are plenty of Judeo-Christian believers out there who do not hold to a young earth view. Personally, as a hard line evangelical christian, I hold to a 13 billion year old universe and roughly 5 billion year old solar system. I utterly reject biological evolution.

I utterly reject biological evolution
does put you you in a different boat than biological science. Your word ‘utterly’ indicates to me that your rejection is emotional/religious and not scientific. Americans are also exceptional in how many rejects the pillar modern biology.

The origin of new species and genera from existing ones has been observed over and over and over again in the wild and created or recreated in the lab. The same processes that produce new species and genera also drive the evolution of new families, orders, classes, phyla and all other clades.

Except for the first protocell, which arose via chemical evolution, then proceeded to undergo biological evolution into all the species of the past four billion years.

I wonder what scientific arguments you can make against observations of fact.

Maybe the universe is a computer simulation and its only a few thousand years old, All the inconsistent data which leads to patches such as Dark Matter, entanglement and Cubs winning the World Series are coding mistakes, sloppy work by coding elves working for the Great Programmer?

The Cubs winning the World Series definitely means SOMETHING! I mean, gosh golly that was something that was never supposed to happen. The equivalent of the Coyote catching the Road Runner. A violation of all natural laws as we understand them,. The moral equivalent of the sun rising in the west and setting in the east. Need I go on?

Maybe we’re petri dish experiments conducted by space aliens. That would explain a lot toward our deeply flawed bodily functions despite the glorification of evolution or trying to justify why a good God would make us so defective.

Aliens, then, are our “intermediate gods” and perhaps the many gods of our ancestors were really all those aliens popping in and out of our petri dish here on Earth.

The existence of a higher Creator or Universal Intelligence does not necessarily have to preclude Big Bang, aliens, and evolution.

No, belief in such an entity or divinity surely doesn’t preclude accepting well-established but always improving scientific conclusions. But the God Hypothesis isn’t scientific, since it can’t make testable predictions, among other reasons. Science seeks naturalistic explanations, and the GH is by definition supernatural. It doesn’t explain anything, but rather puts off trying to find natural explanations of observed phenomena.

Trying to inject religious belief into science damages both religion and science. Some scientists in past centuries claimed that their religious beliefs motivated their quest to understand the natural world, but IMO that was mostly window dressing. Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Steno, Newton, et al believed in God (if not in the Trinity) but tried to find out how the universe works without reference to miracles, but by natural processes subject to discovery.

I see that you answered my above post by giving this treatise from MIT on a Mathematical Universe, I should have scrolled down some more, my bad. On a TOE level there is more going on, check out the group, Quantum Gravity Research. It will show that the ‘GOD’ question is not established, it’s just not the ‘GOD’ everyone thinks about (it does not/ can not, give a s**t). It’s plausible (from a mathematical quantum physical level) but impossible to prove (right now), just like everything else. But is it?

Here is their, expensively produced video of the concept:

This is heavy physics people! This could be the ‘Theory of Everything”. Thoughts?

Thanks for the video. My thought? It’s the Theory of Nonsense! It’s based on Tegmark’s mathematical universe theory. Many physicists are laughing (quietly) at him. Some not so quietly to quote Woit (mathematician and physicist from Columbia U):

“Tegmark’s career is a rather unusual story, mixing reputable science with an increasingly strong taste for grandiose nonsense. In this book he indulges his inner crank, describing in detail an uttery empty vision of the “ultimate nature of reality.

Indeed, in 1998, Max Tegmark, then an up-and-coming young cosmologist at Princeton, received an email from a senior colleague warning him off multiverse research: “Your crackpot papers are not helping you,” it said.

According to him, all mathematical structures exist, and the equations of M-theory or whatever else governs Level II are just some random mathematical structure, complicated enough to provide something for us to live in. Yes, this really is as spectacularly empty an idea as it seems.

I think an accurate way of characterizing this is that Tegmark is assuming something that has no reason to be true, then invoking something nonsensical (a measure on the space of all mathematical structures).

This is pretty much absurd, but in any case, note the standard linguistic trick here: what we’re missing is only “direct” observational support, implying that there’s plenty of “indirect” observational support for the Level IV multiverse.The interesting question is why anyone would possibly take this seriously.

A very odd aspect of this whole story is that while Tegmark’s big claim is that Math=Physics, he seems to have little actual interest in mathematics and what it really is as an intellectual subject. There are no mathematicians among those thanked in the acknowledgements, and while “mathematical structures” are invoked in the book as the basis of everything, there’s little to no discussion of the mathematical structures that modern mathematicians find interesting

US law tries to keep illegals out to keep them from being exploited
Pure nonsense. In California where I live, the agricultural Central Valley would not be profitable without exploiting illegal aliens. If it were not so tragic, your comment would be hilarious.

US law tries to keep the illegals out. If the laws were enforced, there would be no illegals to exploit.

But in any case, you’re totally wrong. Clearly, you know nothing of the Central Valley. Ag there has been effectively shut down by the Communist CA government. Meanwhile, illegals, protected by that regime, burn down the national forests from their illegal campfires.

Your bubble world is totally divorced from reality and 180 degrees askew from it.

US law tries to keep the illegals out.
Finally you hit the nail on its head. All countries try to keep illegals out. The US is not very good at it, partly because illegal cheap labor can be exploited for profit. Not because of our good and charitable attitude towards the huddled masses [some of which are vile as you so emotionally point out]. A dirt-poor, illiterate, brown Muslim who slaughters his own goats in his apartment to get halal food as his religion prescribes and considers women as property has zero chance of being welcomed as a legal immigrant regardless of much he yearns to be free.

That M@slim is exactly the kind of immigrant whom the Obama administration wanted to welcome to our shores.
My heart bleeds already. Well, with the election of the present President, the American people said otherwise.

And wisely so. Obama policies let in disease infected “children” whose parents were sure to follow and soon vote Democrat. The same policies let in by lottery such sterling characters as the Boston Marathon Bombers, whose families received hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars, which they repaid by killing and maiming US taxpayers.

So which is it, again, do we exploit poor people of color by letting them in, or show racism by keeping them out?

So which is it, again, do we exploit poor people of color by letting them in, or show racism by keeping them out?
Both, actually. Except we don’t really ‘let them in’ but rather turn a blind eye to their illegal entry for the sake of profit.

You still can’t connect the dots. If we wanted to exploit cheap illegal immigrant labor, we’d let in everyone who wanted to come here, which would be hundreds of millions if not billions.

If we were racists, we’d let in only Europeans, but they are precisely the people we don’t let in. Our laws favor Latin Americans, Africans and Asians. Naturally, we prefer legal immigrants who bring skills or money with them. But no country on Earth lets in more immigrants than the USA.

Only just recently has Mexico stopped shooting illegal immigrants. And only because it now escorts them through Mexico to the USA.

If we wanted to exploit cheap illegal immigrant labor, we’d let in everyone who wanted to come here,
We don’t ‘let them in’, we just don’t enforce our laws because it is profitable not to do so [as long as it is not too much, like the Caravan that just reached our borders].
And, as Pat said, some are vile and otherwise undesirable, so are unwanted for those reasons.

Again, you’re off by 180 degrees. US immigration law favors people of ethnicities other than “white”. Thank God that it favors people with skills and money to help develop our economy over those who want to rip us off.

Thank God that it favors people with skills and money to help develop our economy over those who want to rip us off.
I don’t think the illegal Latino picking oranges at below minimal wage is wanting to rip ‘us’ off.

I get the retort that Earth is about 6500 yrs old teaching high school science from the kids in this community. They are a very religious bunch who have told me that they are also taught to distrust scientists. It puts me in a legally precarious situation really. I can, and do, discuss creationism and BBT side by side explaining that the initial burst of matter and energy sounds much like, “let there be light” followed by the slow agglomeration of matter and energy. In a broad sense, the story and the physical science align.

The matter of time is summed up… what is time to a being/entity which exists separate from it? We, as humans, define time by the period of the rotation of the Earth about its axis and its orbits around the sun. Time to the universe simply… is. When compared to the age of the universe, our lifetimes are infinitesimally short.

@ Felix,
How come these “pollsters” never call me ?
Who do they call?, who even answers a call from an unknown # anymore.
Seems like they must be calling people without caller I.D.
What does that say about the demographics ?

Good question, but there are techniques for calling cell phones. You try to get responses from people in enough different groups so that you can assemble a representative sample. As political polling shows, you need reliably to estimate an accurate mix.

Scientifically Illiterate!.Lief they own most of the Nobel Prizes and basically invented an economic engine and the electronic revolution that powers the world. You guys had to learn English to partake of it.They invented the space age – they were beaten to the first satellite but then in the next decade landed on the moon and blazed through the solar system while the world sat in awe and some fear that America was even greater than you dared think – that’s exceptionalism. Elite Europeans could live another 100 yrs in the US and not see how exceptional it is because they don’t want to comtenplate it.. It is also a confusing place, and surprising and chaotic and inconsistent and disappointing and marvelous…. Being of one mind and so orderly in Europe isn’t turning out as well as you guys thought. You keep going to back to Marx’s poor solution to a 19th Century problem when the best model is shining in front of you. Indeed the people marginalized and outcast by your societies came to America and build the most remarkable society the world has ever known. Who would have thunk freedom-to-do would pay such dividends. Anti-Americanism is founded in deep envy. You certainly aren’t going to be Anti-Gambian or Anti-Herzegovinian.

Scientifically Illiterate!.Lief they own most of the Nobel Prizes and basically invented an economic engine and the electronic revolution that powers the world.
Many of those Nobel Prizes went to immigrants and the like. And the electronic revolution began in Europe [Turing, Zuse, Naur, etc.]
Now, America is characterized by great inequalities, and that is especially the case about scientific literacy. Just look at some of the comments on this very blog.

Well said. And the fact that Americans are more religious than Europeans (except Muslims) is one reason why we’ve been so successful at inventing the future. Might seem counter-intuitive, but it’s not.

Many of our leading scientists, technologists, engineers, doctors, entrepreneurs and inventors have been religious, even in the 20th and 21st centuries.

That close to half the population are creationists of one ilk or another doesn’t matter to our astounding productiveness.

you suppose so many immigrants come here
“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”
The huddled masses came here. Your comment reminds me of the reply given by a [black] man in the street when Obama on a tour to a newly independent country in darkest Africa asked ‘so, my good man, how does it feel to be free?’: “I wouldn’t know, Sir, I’m from Alabama”.
It seems to me that the the USA lately has become rather hostile to immigrants, especially if they are brown, black, or otherwise ‘deplorable’.

America is obviously not hostile to legal immigrants. We let in more of them every year than any number of any other countries combined. Many Americans do object to illegals. That includes lots of black, brown and other complected Americans. You live here without understanding us. You might as well be in Denmark. Maybe it’s because of the bubble world of the provincial Bay Area.

Our immigration laws are far more lax and lenient than any country in Latin America. And they greatly favor non-white immigrants. You are sadly misinformed or willfully ignorant.

But you miss the main point. I’ll ask again. Why do you suppose that so many people want to come here, even at great risk?

Why do you suppose that so many people want to come here, even at great risk?
Simply because the conditions they have are even worse than what they get here.
Becoming a ‘legal immigrant is not easy. The typical waiting time obtain legal immigrant status is in excess of 20 years if your poor, or of color or latino origin.

how exactly were your black Southern acquaintances unfree?
My yard-man, my janitor, my cleaning lady, my dog-sitter all complained how it was difficult for colored people to get ahead in the South, even now.

Do you really not know that without the US, neither Britain nor Russia could have stayed free nor liberated themselves, let alone Denmark?

I guess you don’t know that Khrushchev, you know, the guy who was commissar of the Stalingrad Front and later Premier of the USSR, said that the Red Army couldn’t have gotten from Stalingrad to Berlin without US trucks, let alone all the planes, tanks, materiel and food we gave the USSR.

Did your black acquaintances have jobs or not? Were they better off than had their African ancestors stayed in Africa or not?

The waiting list for people from some countries is long because there are so many in line wanting to get here. It obviously has nothing to do with racism. And you call yourself a scientist? You’re analytical powers seem, umm, challenged.

Hundreds of millions of people want to come here. Of course the wait is long for some.

It obviously has nothing to do with racism
Many of the ones in line for 20+ years disagree with your claim.
Now, if you are rich you can buy instant legal status for about a million dollars. Our neighbor in Houston did exactly that, so he was not one of ‘huddled masses’. BTW the poet Emma Lazarus who wrote those lines was not well regarded because her other works were viewed as ‘too Jewish’.

than we’re willing to let in.
Indeed, that is the operative phrase.
It is not based on the willingness of the millions of would-be immigrants, but on what people here want or fear. “Immigration laws have always sought to preserve an underclass of workers who have few rights, who live in terror of deportation, who can be exploited for the benefit of capitalists and then disposed of”.

And they would be totally wrong, on prima facie basis. Racism has nothing to do with it, except that US law discriminates against Europeans.

Of course wealth matters. Why should not let in people who bring capital? Most of those are wealthy people of color. Can you really be this obtuse and so prejudiced against the country which has given you such opportunity?

PS: Besides all the Lend-Lease materiel which made victory possible for our allies, hundreds of thousands of Americans died to liberate Europe, including Denmark. What an ingrate!

You have it a$$ backwards. Illegal immigration produces an exploitable working class, not legal immigration. People who want cheap, exploitable labor favor illegal immigration. Many H1B visas are also sought by tech companies which want cheaper workers.

In the 19th century, immigration laws banned Chinese and Japanese precisely because American workers didn’t want the competition.

How could you have lived here for so long without learning anything of our history?

How could you have lived here for so long without learning anything of our history?
I have been an immigrant fro decades [even with H1B visa] so know the story from the inside out. And don’t need to be had by misguided propaganda.

Obama allowed in only a few thousand of the 11 million [Muslim] Syrians…If you are rich, white, and Christian it is a lot easier to be allowed in. Now we shall even have ‘extreme vetting’ of the huddled masses.

Between 1980 and 2015, the US demographic proportion of Hispanics went from 5% to 15% of the population, Lief. That increase was not due to the birthrate of Hispanic citizens. Your “rich, white, christian” is just you adhering to a lie.

Despite your false connection, to be “Muslim” is not a statement of race, but of an ideology.

That ideology is implacably hostile to individual freedom, freedom of conscience, of association, of thought, of speech, and of everything else that makes life worthwhile. Why would a society of free people import groups mortally hostile to it?

Given the present grotesque experience with Muslim immigrants in greater Scandinavia, your sympathy with Muslim immigration amounts to your embrace of cruelty.

Between 1980 and 2015, the US demographic proportion of Hispanics went from 5% to 15% of the population,
The overwhelming number came from Mexico. There are 1.4 million Mexicans waiting to be let in. The annual quota is only about 50,000. So over the 35 years since 1980 only 1.75 million were let in. That is about 0.5% of the US population. Where did the remaining 9.5% come from?

Pat Frank posts: ” “Muslim” is not a statement of race, but of an ideology”
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I nominate this post to be the stupidest one in the past month. “Muslim” is a religion. Secondly, you say it is “hostile to individual freedom, freedom of conscience, of association, of thought, of speech, and of everything else that makes life worthwhile”
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Please contact Keith Ellison at https://ellison.house.gov/ I’m sure he’ll be happy to discuss your ignorant post.
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I’m sure you know what the 1st Amendment says about religion.

They came in illegally, Lief, and were eventually granted citizenship by special legislation. There have been three such tranches of people. That history objectively refutes your pejorative view of the US. As does the rest of American history.

The present illegals came here after the amnesty. No one knows how many there are, but the estimate of eleven million is almost certainly too low. But in the 32 years since the last amnesty, that’s an average of only ~344,000 per year. However, a great many children have been born here to illegals. They’re automatically US citizens, so the number of illegals and their legal kids is surely far higher than 11 million.

The Border Patrol and ICE apprehend only a small fraction of those who sneak across our borders, who overstay their tourist or student visas or who apply for asylum, then go into hiding with other illegals, to include gangbangers.

You lived in the US during Reagan’s amnesty. Did it somehow slip your notice at the time, or have you forgotten?
The amnesty only garnered about 3 million illegal, far short of the 30 million that you claimed became legal [not by birth and such]. So you are plain wrong. Get your numbers straight and we can talk.

In the first place, “Muslim” is not a religion. It refers to a member of the religion of Islam.
Just to repeat so you know for sure, Islam is the religion. Muslim is a believer in Islam. Got it?

Second I saw nothing about Islam on Keith Ellison’s site.

As to ideology, Islam requires death for apostasy, thereby disallowing freedom of conscience. It allows no negotiation on this dictate, making it an ideology par excellence.

Islam mandates death for changing your religion to any other religion except Islam. It requires death for criticizing Muhammad, who, given his affinity for rape, murder, and slaves, is well worth criticizing.

Muslims consider Muhammad, by the way, to have been guided by god and so to show the divine ideal of behavior – hence the importance of the sunna. Whatever he did is divinely ordained as right and correct — and that would include his rapes, murders, and slave-takings. Enslavement of non-Muslims is not only allowed by the Koran, but mandated by it.

By Muhammad’s example and the mandate of the Koran, Muslims are divinely allowed to rape, kill, and enslave non-Muslims.

Islamic societies have a 1000-year history of rapacious slaving, not only of Africans but of Europeans. And not just permitted by Islam, but required by it.

Islam requires an intolerant religious state, and an Islamic state imposes an intolerant Islam by law. The Islamic dhimma is a recipe of oppression.

Islam is entirely incompatible with democracy, with republican forms of government, and with any sort of personal freedom. It is mortally and implacably hostile to everything that makes the US worthwhile.

And that’s Keith Ellison’s choice of religion, and the vile ideology you defend.

My numbers are right. The at least 11 million illegals came here after the amnesty,
No, those are in addition to the 27 [the 9.5%] you overlook.
When you claim that the Hispanic population increased from 5% to 15%, does that increase include the 11 million? those are not in the statistic?
So, your numbers are not correct.

In 1980, Hispanics made up about 5% of a 227 million US population. Call it a generous 12 million people.

A 2% growth rate (a generous estimate), yields 26 million people in 2018.

Hispanics today are about 15% of a 327 million population, call it 49 million people. The difference is a lower limit estimate of 23 million people from either illegal immigrants or their offspring.

In 1980, most Hispanics, like most Americans per se, were middle class. Middle class families have fewer children. Their natural growth rate would have been more like 1%, yielding 18 million people today.

A more realistic estimate of initially illegal plus offspring is then 31 million people.

From 1900 to 1980, the average annual US population growth was about 1.9 million people. From 1981-2018, annual growth was about 2.9 million people (data).

Guess from where the difference.

You like numerology. Let’s see, umm, (2.9-1.9) million excess per year x 35 years = 35 million people.

Minus your 1.75 million legal immigrants leaves 33.25 million from initially illegal immigration plus offspring. Almost identical to the realistic estimate of excess.

A more realistic estimate of initially illegal plus offspring is then 31 million people.
I think you said [check it for me] that the growth was not due to having babies, so exclude that ‘natural growth’.

No one knows how many illegal Latinos are in the US. Estimates range from nine to 30 million.

As of 2014-13, of an estimated 50 million Latinos in the US, as few as 18% might have been illegal. A higher but not improbable guess of 20 million illegal Latinos means that there would be 61 million total Latinos, including citizens, legal and illegal residents. In that case, about 20% of US residents would be Latino.

The point is that almost any number of people might have come here illegally since 1986, since our borders are practically wide open.

ROTFLMFAO @ Pat Frank: “Second I saw nothing about Islam on Keith Ellison’s site.”
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You are seriously mentally deficient. You are claiming that Ellison’s ideology is vile. I’ll bet you cringed when he took his oath of office on a Koran!
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Islam is a religion, and it’s God is the God of Abraham. Jesus is considered a significant prophet in it. Why is it vile? Is it vile for a Muslim to admire Mary the mother of Jesus as Muslims do?
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You have a perverted view based on misinterpretations of their sacred texts by hateful ideologues.
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THIS IS A WINNER: “Islam is entirely incompatible with democracy” Then please explain why the following countries: : Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria all are officially democracies or monarchies with elected political leaders?????
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The only thing vile here is your hate towards something you know nothing about.

We were discussing immigration, not babies. And the legal immigrants made up only 0.5% of the increase. And you still have to wait for 20 years even if you have family here. Unskilled foreign laborers [‘the huddled masses’] have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting in.

ROTFLMFAO @ Pat Frank: “Second I saw nothing about Izlam on Keith Ellison’s site.”
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You are seriously mentally deficient. You are claiming that Ellison’s ideology is vile. I’ll bet you cringed when he took his oath of office on a Koran!
…
Izlam is a religion, and it’s God is the God of Abraham. Jesus is considered a significant prophet in it. Why is it vile? Is it vile for a Muzlim to admire Mary the mother of Jesus as Muzlims do?
..
You have a perverted view based on misinterpretations of their sacred texts by hateful ideologues.
…
THIS IS A WINNER: “Izlam is entirely incompatible with democracy” Then please explain why the following countries: : Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria all are officially democracies or monarchies with elected political leaders?????
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The only thing vile here is your hate towards something you know nothing about.

Lief, we were discussing your ugly race-baiting canard, “It seems to me that the the USA lately has become rather hostile to immigrants, especially if they are brown, black, or otherwise ‘deplorable’.”

The US let in three groups of illegal migrants, mostly from Mexico. They were made citizens by special legislation. They live as free Americans with full rights. None of that supports your accusation of race bias.

The US has every right to resist further influxes of illegal migrants, without having to make excuses and without having to absorb your racial jaundice.

None of that supports your accusation of race bias
Regardless of your opinion, the US has always [including today] been hostile to people [immigrants] that were poor, colored, or otherwise unwanted. So race bias is alive and well.

Glad also to see that you agree with me by now describing Ellison’s belief as, “Ellison’s ideology.” Good job updating your view to the fact of the matter.

The Koran describes Jews as descended from pigs and monkeys. Does that sound consistent with Constitutional values?

An Islamic state requires discrimination based on religion. It accuses Christians and Jews of falsifying their scripture and then denies them any valid standing before its courts because they are ideologically convicted liars.

Any Hindu, Christian, or Jew living under Islamic law is subject to immediate death if they protest their oppression or even try to defend themselves from casual abuse by a Muslim.

Islam binds Muslims to loyalty only to the umma and its expression as an Islamic state. No other state is licit.

Anyone holding those views is hostile the the US, and is not fit to be a citizen of this country.

If Keith Ellison as a devout Muslim believer holding those views took his oath of office on a Koran, an oath swearing loyalty to the US Constitution, then his oath was ipso facto a lie.

Your argument about countries fails to distinguish between an Islamic state and a state with Muslims as citizens. An Islamic state is necessarily a tyranny.

Muslims who lapse from Islam, or otherwise depart from Islamic law can inhabit a non-Islamic state. Such Muslims are considered munafiqun (hypocrites) and are subject to jihad (immediate murder) by the devout. The closer to Islam, the more intolerant.

In states with majority Muslims where Islam is at all honored or made a basis for law, Egypt for example or Pakistan and others, religious minorities are second class citizens, even if the full dhimma is not applied.

illegal entrants have already been granted citizenship.
As I have shown you that is just a drop in the ocean and does nothing for the millions increasingly facing deportation and would-be refugees facing ‘extreme vetting’.

Why do you imagine that America, uniquely among all the nations of the earth, should let in anyone who wants to come here, regardless of whether he or she is a criminal, totally without any skill or wanting only to have an anchor baby, kill and rape US citizens or engage in insurance fraud?

Why do you imagine that America, uniquely among all the nations of the earth, should let in anyone who wants to come here, regardless of whether he or she is a criminal…
Now it is you who don’t connect the dots. I argued that we shouldn’t and was declared to be racist or worse.

Lief, “the US has always [including today] been hostile to people [immigrants] that were poor, colored, or otherwise unwanted.”

Not the US, Lief. Some people were hostile. Other people were not. The US itself let the immigrants in. They received full rights of citizenship.

Assigning to the collective the negative attributes of some individuals is the classic mistake of the racist. That’s the mistake in evidence in your post, Lief. The particular manifestation there is not racism, though, but the noxious effluvium of Progressivist anti-Americanism.

Paul Hollander has documented it. So has Jean-François Revel. Mark Lilla has written about it. And you evidence a bad case of it.

The US itself let the immigrants in. They received full rights of citizenship.
Only a small fraction were ‘let in’. The overwhelming majority [tens of millions] ‘sneaked in’ and are still illegal and would be deported if it were not for the profit of having their cheap labor.

Frank says: “Glad I could help out.” …..well you aren’t helping me. You could help if you can tell me why your posts get past the spam filter.
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I see you are incapable of recognizing my sarcastic reference to “Ellison’s ideology.” You must be confused with his religion and the oath of office he took. Funny you accuse him of being a liar. You don’t know the difference between ideology and religion.
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Your bigotry is exemplified by the sources you cite. Phyllis Chesler is not an authority on religion, and not an authority on ideology. Ibn Warraq is a pen name, and has unknown/unverifiable credentials.
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My argument about countries is valid. Their majority follows the religion, and they practice democracy. It proves your argument invalid.
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Your knowledge of the religion is lacking, and your claim of it’s “ideology” humorous. Pure unadulterated bigotry.

Lief, “Only a small fraction were ‘let in’. The overwhelming majority [tens of millions] ‘sneaked in’ and are still illegal and would be deported if it were not for the profit of having their cheap labor.”

Wrong, Lief. The overwhelming majority of illegal in-migrants since 1980 were granted citizenship by special legislation. That refutes your falsehood about hostility toward non-Europeans.

Those who are illegally present today are a small number compared to the 30 million derived from earlier tranches of illegal in-migrants. Such people have no right to expect citizenship and no right to jump to the head of the line.

That American plotocrats want them here is no fault of American society.

Pat Frank May 12, 2018 at 10:11 am
Lief, “Only a small fraction were ‘let in’. The overwhelming majority [tens of millions] ‘sneaked in’ and are still illegal and would be deported if it were not for the profit of having their cheap labor.”

Wrong, Lief. The overwhelming majority of illegal in-migrants since 1980 were granted citizenship by special legislation. That refutes your falsehood about hostility toward non-Europeans.

The bill signed by Reagan granted green cards, not citizenship, to about 2.7 million, Leif is right.
Of course once you have a green card you can apply for citizenship after continuous residence of 5 years, once you apply you can’t leave the country until naturalized. You have to satisfy all the normal requirements too, civics/history test etc.

Hardly the grant expected of a racist society.
It is very difficult [in practice: impossible] for poor people with no skills to obtain a green card…
The equation has not changed one whit.
Here are the conditions for a green card [other than based on family]
Are a first preference immigrant worker, meaning you:
Have extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts, education, business or athletics, or
Are an outstanding professor or researcher, or
Are a multinational manager or executive who meets certain criteria
Are a second preference immigrant worker, meaning you:
Are a member of a profession that requires an advanced degree, or
Have exceptional ability in the sciences, arts, or business, or
Are seeking a national interest waiver
Are a third preference immigrant worker, meaning you are:
A skilled worker (meaning your job requires a minimum of 2 years training or work experience), or
A professional (meaning your job requires at least a U.S. bachelor’s degree or a foreign equivalent and you are a member of the profession), or
You must be capable, at the time the petition is filed on your behalf, of performing unskilled labor (requiring less than 2 years training or experience), that is not of a temporary or seasonal nature, for which qualified workers are not available in the United States.

I’m a bit puzzled by your persistent referral to ‘race’. I noted that people that had a hard time to become US citizens were often poor, brown, and low-skilled. That is a reflection of the reality of the system, not of my thought about how it should be. My personal opinion has no influence on how the US conducts its immigration policy.

Here’s what you wrote on May 10, 2018 at 6:35 pm, Lief: “It seems to me that the the USA lately has become rather hostile to immigrants, especially if they are brown, black, or otherwise ‘deplorable’.”

And you followed that up on May 10, 2018 at 8:41 pm with, “If you are rich, white, and Christian it is a lot easier to be allowed in.”

You’re on record directly imputing racism against the US. There’s no use playing the innocent.

My series of posts about actual American history in the matter of immigration, especially here factually demonstrates that you’re wrong about the racism and wrong about the immigration.

I have traveled in different parts of the world and lived in different parts of the U. S. and have come in contact with people in all walks of life and I have known only a couple of people that actually believe the Earth is only a few thousand years old. Polls smolls.

Personally the thing I love about the Young Earth Theory is that, if it WE’RE true, then God must have intentionally made the Earth to LOOK like it had been here for Millions of years. And if he was going to fake that much past, who’s to say he had to start at pre history. Maybe the Earth is only a few HUNDRED years old.

Heck, maybe he created it last Tuesday. You only THINK you know what you did last weekend.

Cue atheists. They don’t recognize at the core, the very core of their worldview, is faith. They have faith that there is no Creator, only random chance. Everything else flows from that and sadly, their religion is misanthropy, evidenced in the desire to blame man for the climate etc. Not all, but a good solid portion. Look at Isval. Classic arrogant fool bloviating like the rest of them, spouting falsehoods, pretending they hold true.
I find people like him disgusting, actually

Hey Isval, if you think Americans are so incompetent and inferior, go back to your Homeland you piece of atheist trash. Seriously, if it’s so bad and Americans are so terrible, then leave us be. We have enough arrogance and condescendingly smug from the “progressives”. Seriously. Leave

“Piece of atheist trash” is IMO not a very Christian sentiment. Christianity is supposed to be about love, not hate, to include love for your “enemies” and those who persecute you. You’re not supposed to persecute others, although that ideal has often been violated by supposed Christians.

As with everyone else, there are good and bad atheists. Stalin was bad. Edison was good, except maybe in some of his business practices, but in any case no worse than comparable alleged Christians.

Perhaps a more meaningful comparison would be between medical researchers with similar accomplishments in advancing understanding of disease. Pasteur was a devout Catholic. Koch was irreligious. Humanity owes both its present health and numbers.

I would suggest such a statement is deflection. We cannot control the climate, the sun, the earth itself, all we can do is adapt. Having an understanding of what may happen can help us adapt but it in no way proves ignorance.

lsvalgaard, this thread has been eye opening in regards to you. I like the way your posts have dripped with both vitriol towards Christians and America and yet at the same time wrap yourself up in self righteousness. I am really impressed with the way you provided a nice defense for yourself by then proceeding to mock anyone who might be offended.

I have found in life that if you give people a chance their real feelings and character will come out from behind the thin veneer of civility sooner or later.

Oh, they are kind words alright. I met quite a few people like you while I was getting my degrees. Fortunately, I also met some great people, capable of tolerance and possessing the ability to get into deep, respectful discussions with those with whom they disagreed.

‘Good for you, but not very helpful when it comes to the lack of scientific literacy among a large part of the American population.’

Hey Leif, ever feel like I did in that car arguing about the direction of the rising moon?

And lest I gave the wrong impression in that story – it wasn’t that these college educated adults (not urbanites by the way), didn’t know better, it was that one of them said something stupid, refused to back off of it, once I pointed it out, and everybody else who ALSO should have known better dog-piled simply because they were all on the ‘same side.’

Personally own view of religion is simply people trying to explain the world around them, and perspective changes, even though they’re all trying to tell the same story. Lightning bolts are existentially the same phenomenon today as they were when caveman were watching them, or when they were the wrath of Zeus. And then there’s the Big Bang versus ‘Let There Be Light’ – when you think about it, there are more similarities than differences.

This would be a relevant comment if the young earther percentage increased among conservatives as their scientific literacy increased. I’ve never seen any information to suggest that it is the case. Certainly here at WUWT there are no shortage of non-creationist skeptics.

However, it is interesting (to me) that conservative/liberals move in different directions as they learn more in this country, while I’ve never heard of the same effect happening in Western European democracies. It’s not that the science is different in America, so could it be that the conservatives are different? By American standards, both major parties in England (for example) would be considered liberal, American-style conservatives are reduced to a fringe party there. I suspect if a survey of UKIP voters were done, you might also find skepticism increasing among them as their scientific literacy increases.

The main divider between conservatives and liberals in this country, and the main common cause between US liberals and western Europeans, is their view of the role government. AGW is of interest to both parties not because of the mild and harmless warming we have experienced, but because of the political remedies proposed to “solve” AGW. Those who look to government to solve problems see that the only way to prevent AGW is worldwide governmental cooperation, restraining natural economic choices for the greater good. Those who see government as a necessary evil that often does more harm that good expect that approach to be a recipe for expensive and ineffective measures, while natural economic choices could easily adapt to the demonstrated and likely effects of AGW without governmental intervention.

There are actually three main issues relevant to skepticism, IMO:

1) What is the actual sensitivity to doubled CO2?
2) If #1 is established, what is the economic/biological impact of that change?
3) If #2 is established, is mitigation or adaption a more sensible strategy?

None of these are remotely settled science. The question then becomes more of a philosophical one — in the *absence* of settled science, does it make more sense to jump to mitigation or to rely on adaptation, and in *that* question we can expect the default socialist and libertarian answers to be very, very different.

Why Replacing Politicians With Experts Is A Reckless Idea
By David Runciman on May 11, 2018 08:15 am
There is a fine line between epistocracy (rule by ‘knowers’) and Technocracy (rule by ‘experts’) and in the end, epistocracy would collapse into Technocracy anyway. This is a thoughtful article excerpted from a newly published book, How Democracy Ends.

We also have the Millennia generation that overwhelming believes in human cause Global Warming yet 30 percent of them do not believe the earth is round. How do you reconcile that! I would attribute mistaken beliefs in poor teaching. Both beliefs are wrong yes the earth is warming and humans do have some affect, how much is not known. That is the facts that is not what they were taught. As why the question if the earth is round is beyond me, I can only guess that I know in their indoctrination which use to be call education they have been taught all facts a subjective. I know for a fact my parents generation were better educated then then I was (even though a good percentage of them were educated in one room school houses,) or the present generation is today, it all started to go south in the fifties with people that though they were smarter that past generation because the had access to more knowledge. To bad knowledge and intelligence are not the same thing.

The wording of the poll was idiotic. The only choices were warming caused by humans, by natural variability or both. Not even “consensus climate scientists” believe that warming since AD 1700 has been entirely caused by humans, or even since the end of WWII, when CO2 took off and the world cooled dramatically until 1977.

If you read the fine print of poll survey, people who answered “both” (that global warming was both caused by natural variability and human activity) were excluded from the results. This is incredibly odd because I think everyone can agree that the Earth has warmed since the LIA before man made CO2 was even a thing.

And now zazove. The only good poll is the poll that ratifies what you already thought, eh? How would your poll go if it disclosed to the east asians that they must give up rice due to all that terrible ghg?

I’ll make two points.
1) Not a significant sample but I am only in touch with 3 other geologists from my degree in London, and we are all absolute deniers. I only know the views one other from my era at the same college – one Naomi Oreskes. I think it fair to say we know her views. At least we are winning 4:1.
2) The whole anthropogenic global warming discussion started as a scientific argument and, in my opinion, that’s the only way it can end. It’s so easy to conflate supposed scientific viewpoints with political ones and you can debate until the bar closes about what makes conservatives more sceptical and left-liberals more inclined to be warmists. In the long run, however, I’m really not sure if there is any mileage in this at all. Indeed, if we deniers campaign on any sort of political platform, it can only damage our cause because we will never change individuals’ political standpoints. AGW is about science and that is that. It’s the real science that we somehow need to get across to the public and governments.
OK, so you can accuse me of being naïve and ignoring the obvious link between politics and AGW and all of its economic ramifications. Nevertheless, I maintain that getting involved with the politics is simply a waste of effort.

Well, they’ve already tried to eliminate “falsifiability” as a criterion for science, so why would you need to reproduce results? After all not getting the same answer would just be a result of “trying to find something wrong” (‘Why should I give you my data?’) with the original researcher’s work.

be empirically testable or lead to testable predictions or retrodictions (use present information or ideas to infer or explain a past event or state of affairs)
make verified predictions and/or retrodictions
lead to reproducible results so others can double-check
include criteria for determining whether data is factual, artifactual, anomalous or irrelevant
A scientific theory must help us understand the nature of our data.

I read that report. It makes a lot of very good points. The 40 suggestions are right on target, for the most part.. I’m not sure making rules that apply across all fields and in every case is necessarily sound.

“They single out progressives…..and ream climate science a new one……unverifiable climate science”

I didn’t get this impression. What do you mean? …Oh, I see, you’re getting it from the article about it. There’s not actually that much about climate sciencr in the report. There’s a section about groupthink with a statement from Judith Curry that has always bothered me.

College Fix article: ““Not all irreproducible research is progressive advocacy; not all progressive advocacy is irreproducible; but the intersection between the two is very large. The intersection between the two is a map of much that is wrong with modern science,”” It says this is in the report, but I think it’s from his speech. It shows more obviously the writer’s position that the report does. (“Irreproducible”?)

There is a problem with the whole report: there is no distinction between getting the same results using independent methods, and using the same methods (and sometimes data ), repeating the experiment. They are very different issues. The whole topic of experimental design is glossed over in favor of statistics, and even that is not addressed very thoroughly. Using confidence intervals rather than p-value doesn’t make sense to me.

Nowhere in the report is there anything about the philosophy of science, not just the methods but the methodology. This is fundamental, it is from this that all the best practices are developed

Scientists are already improving the profession, due to impetus from within the community. That’s what science does. It improves. It corrects errors. The health, medical and social science fields are not representative of science as a whole.

…in some parts of a small number of countries, particularly those in areas with high numbers of fundamentalist Christians with low science literacy. This kind of political polarisation- progressive, liberal, doesn’t apply in Japan for example where 90%+ think humans are largely responsible for recent warming.
So that would include the vast majority of conservative Japanese.

Years ago I was driving on a lonely stretch of road on a Sunday night trying to find ANYTHING on the radio. Finally came across a very conservative Christian talk show. The guest was a scientist, astronomer or astro physicist or something.

He was also a “young earther”. The host asked how he reconciled his beliefs with a young earth (actually it’s a young universe not just earth) and the science that shows that the universe is so vasts Specifically how can we see something like Andromeda which science tells us is about 2.5 million light years away?

His answer: God created the light en-route. Sure it’s 2.5 million light years away. So God created 2.5 million years of light heading towards earth so we can see it.

Apparently he believed in a devious God intent on fooling us about the apparent age of the universe.

Anyone with a triple digit I.Q. It is a variation on Pascal’s Wager. If God is *not* all loving, all forgiving (etc) but is instead a jealous God (which he proclaims of himself more than once if I remember right), well, how different is that from working for a jealous employer or married to a jealous spouse?

You learn the rules and obey them. That might not be what you had in mind by “worship” but there it is.

Since the sun was created on the third “day” these periods cannot be 24 hour solar days because there wasn’t a solar! It is also a leap to suppose each of them are the same duration in time, or that they denote TIME at all.

“Yes, there is reason. You are demonstrating a lazy attitude toward linguistics.”

“Since the sun was created on the third “day” these periods cannot be 24 hour solar days because there wasn’t a solar! It is also a leap to suppose each of them are the same duration in time, or that they denote TIME at all.”

More rationalizing. The leap is yours, assuming a “day” is anything but a day. The fact that there was light before there was a sun to provide it is just an example of inconsistency. Neither you nor I know their reasoning, but taking it at anything other than face value is pure speculation, or making stuff up.

Of course; making a thing rational. Your claim was that there is “no reason” and I have provided a reason. I win, you lose.

You could have written: “There is no rational reason, by my definition of rational and my definition of reason, to believe (x)”.

But using MY definitions of reason suddenly there is reason for belief that “day” isn’t always a 24 hour period. Indeed, I believe Hebrew doesn’t have a word for the 24 hour day. Bible says “the evening and the morning” were the first day. NIGHT is day! Not morning and evening; it was evening and morning. Hebrews start their “day” at sunset.

But we strain at gnats in English, which is not the language of its writing. But it is fun to argue gnats.

It clearly states in Genesis One, 3-5 that, “And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day.”

Each subsequent “day” of creation consists evening and morning, which on Earth happens because of our planet’s rotation. But it’s obvious that the author of Genesis One didn’t know this. He thought that the Sun has nothing to do with day and night.

In Genesis One, 1-2, we learn that Earth is being referred to, which has the same connotations in Hebrew as in English. Hence, night and day must result from the rotation of our planet. But that’s not the case in Genesis.

Not to mention that the creation myth in Genesis Two contradicts irreconcilably the story in Genesis One.

“Apparently he believed in a devious God intent on fooling us about the apparent age of the universe.”

It would be extremely difficult, probably impossible, to prove that this is not the case. Several pretty good science fiction stories have been made; several episodes of Star Trek TNG deal with it such as sending Moriarty off in a space shuttle to explore the universe, except he’s actually in a little cube of memory, a virtual person in a virtual universe, and with no way to discover that he’s not.

The implication, and plot twist of the story, is that there’s no way for you or I to know whether the universe is “real” or we too are in a simulation.

Probably true that no one could show false the belief that God made the universe deceptively, so as to appear 13.7 billion years old. However, who would want to worship such a devious Creator?

Besides which, it doesn’t matter to science, which searches only for naturalistic explanations for observations of the universe. To scientists, it doesn’t matter whether God made the universe or not, trickily or not. The scientific conclusion is that light from distant galaxies actually came from them and wasn’t created already in route.

I would say the amount of cognitive dissonance required to believe a tribal goat herder god created earth in 7 days is exactly equal to that required to believe human sourced C02 controls the temperature of the earth.

It’s actually more believable to me that aliens visited and one got left here who then was worshiped as a son of god. His followers are still eagerly waiting their return so they will be taken back with them to where ever they came from.

“It’s actually more believable to me that aliens visited and one got left here who then was worshiped as a son of god.”

I was intrigued by this possibility as a teenager and young adult. I read Chariots of the Gods with some gullibility. Some of it still intrigues me, but the evidence is lacking. It still holds a little place in my thoughts. Though the Ancient aliens garbage on so-called History Channel turns me right off.

Obviously you cannot prove it. Thus, you operate on a belief. If you are a skeptic you spent part of your life doubting what seems to be real so as to discover reality, if there is one, and what it might be.

“Obviously you cannot prove it. Thus, you operate on a belief. If you are a skeptic you spent part of your life doubting what seems to be real so as to discover reality, if there is one, and what it might be.”

You have things backwards. I don’t need to prove I wasn’t created 7 minutes ago, I’m not the one making the claim. The one making the claim needs to provide evidence. Just saying it isn’t evidence.

Inductive logic requires to examine every possible cause for an observation, and by some means or other rule out the impossible causes, then the merely unlikely causes, but the unlikely causes cannot actually be removed from the table, just pushed to the side, figuratively speaking, since one of those unlikely causes is still possible.

It appears you have not examined the possibility that you were created seven minutes ago, complete with memories of having this argument over a span of several days.

The greater argument is whether it is possible that god or God is deceptive and created Earth at any time between its apparent formation and any other date chosen by someone — or 7 minutes ago (argumentum ad absurdum).

It should be trivial to prove you were not created 7 minutes ago; even if that proof is only to yourself. Making that proof to others is a bit more complicated because that includes proving you exist, so that you can assert you were created 7 minutes ago, or as long ago as you choose to claim.

Now then, if God is deceptive then a great many arguments become pointless; but then, many already are, including perhaps this one.

Fifty years ago this July, Pope Paul VI promulgated his encyclical “Humanae Vitae,” which reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s traditional prohibition of artificial birth control and set off one of the most divisive debates in modern church history.

Catholics have overwhelmingly rejected the document’s teaching. A 2014 Univision poll found that large majorities of self-identified Catholics in traditional strongholds of the faith favored the use of contraceptives: 93% in Brazil, 84% in Italy and 68% in the Philippines. In the U.S., a 2016 study by the Pew Research Center found that only 13% of weekly Mass-going Catholics thought contraception was morally wrong.

The need for this constant stream of pop-psychologists papers is merely a reflection of their inability to understand why people are AGW skeptics in the first place. Unable to accept that that it can be on scientific grounds , because they themselves regard its as ‘settled science ‘ , they must hunt around for other ideas.

If it’s on scientific grounds, there should be no relationship between political leaning and skepticism. How do you explain that your group is the only group in the world that is so full of skeptics? And how do you reconcile that in light of the fact that Big Oil was working with conservative think tanks and “outreach groups” and the media to spread misinfomation?

And why do you think it’s odd that people can’t understand how you can say you are skeptics when you find a reason to reject every type of evidence for (C)AGW? Or when people deny the consensus, which has been demonstrated multiple times now – not among all scientists, but among those who have experience in climate science. It’s immaterial what economic geologists think; they are not necessarily in a better position to know climate science than a layman.

Science is never really settled, but there are some things we can be pretty confident of happening – that’s what people mean by “settled.”

no sound involved. She is. truly. brainwashed.
don’t you just love the useful idiots? Since they don’t believe in objective truth, they love to revise history so as to neglect the really critical parts… which is why useful idiots are always the first to be culled when the despots take power. That day, I eagerly await. I’ll have popcorn ready :) and some good homemade hooch

“And how do you reconcile that in light of the fact that Big Oil was working with conservative think tanks and “outreach groups” and the media to spread misinfomation?”

Exactly what misinformation did they spread? More than the Obama administration when they said extreme weather was getting extremier? When a member of the UK Met Office said kids won’t know what snow is any more? When Phil Jones hid the decline in a Keith Briffa paper in order to send the “right” message?

“How do you explain that your group is the only group in the world that is so full of skeptics?”

1. It makes sense that an English-speaking country would contain the most skeptics, because over 90% of the papers and studies to which their arguments link are in English, so only in such countries can they hope to convince their audience of their claims by getting them to read their supporting material. (In addition, the English in such documents is not the sort that foreigners have learned in school, being full of jargon and special terms and English-based abbreviations (e.g., LIA) that English-speakers can more easily puzzle out.). Elsewhere, audiences will tend to defer to The Authorities.

2. There needs to be a critical mass of skeptics to create a self-sustaining movement in a country, because a wide range of expertise is important in being able to quickly counter the other side’s challenges. I.e., someone in the skeptic’s camp will have the arguments and/or critical links to enable the movement to hold its own in online debate and in presentations to legislatures. But such a critical mass can’t be created in a country that doesn’t speak English.

3. There is more motivation to be an active skeptic in the U.S., and to donate to skepticxal think tanks, etc., because the potential payoff is much higher here. IOW, if skeptics can influence politicians here to vote down cap-and-trade laws and/or to exit the Paris accord, that will have more effect on derailing the West’s climate craziness than if some smaller country like Canada or Australia did so.

4. The UN is headquartered here, So are the majority of the world’s most influential scientific societies and bureaucracies, such as the EPA. We’re in the belly of the beast, so we are closer to the scene of the action, and to our targets than foreigners.

5. The U.S. has a tradition of cocking its snoot at authorities of all kinds, and a strong contrarian streak that scoffs at whatever is handed down from on high. It has strong individualistic, egalitarian, and rebellious tendencies. Few people here “know their place.” Many enjoy calling BS on what they consider to be highfalutin nonsense. This is quite different from the deference shown to elites in France and Germany, and even Canada.

Of course, this knee-jerk tendency can kick at contentions that are sound, too. But that doesn’t weaken my point, which is that this scoffing at climatology doesn’t need funding or brainwashing to flourish.

The article and study exhibit the common theme of completely ignoring the UN’s MyWorld 2015 survey, where action on climate change finished dead last of people’s priorities for government action around the globe. Not to mention the flip side of their result; more than anywhere else in the world, beleif in CAGW is tied to one political party.

That’s why I’m here. Your use of ‘climate’ has no meaning. Like ‘climate change,’ which is undefined.

Earth does not have a climate. It has many climates. It’s below zero in the Antarctic at the same time it’s over a hundred in the Sahara. Climate is the general weather of an area or region. The earth has many areas and regions.

‘No one denies the climate.’

No one denies the general weather of an area.

The only place on earth where there is actual climate change is the Sahel.

Here is a description of earth’s climate zones. Note that for most, a change of average temperature of a degree or two would NOT be climate change.

Presumably the theory and the evidence, past and present. When people won’t admit that the world really is warming, ocean temps change, sea level rising, waters acidifying, corals having significant problems, precipitation patterns changing, etc. – and that the anthropogenic warming of the planet is a significant problem – that, to me, is denial of the basic science. The idea that climate change is a good thing is not based on scientific evidence – or, it’s based on looking at only a small part of the evidence. That alone – choosing the evidence to support ones arguments and discarding the rest – is not logical or scientific.

Making erroneous assumptions is incredibly pervasive around here, I know that from experience. Many people don’t understand what i’m saying because they assume they know how I think. The whole debate on both side is full of false assumptions, prejudice and emotion.

Conservative Americans are the last real bastion of AGW denial in the WORLD. Doesn’t that tell you anything? Do you really believe U.S. conservatives are scientifically smarter than everyone else? Why? Or is it that you are better able to identify a climate conspiracy?

So, lets discuss this Kristi Silber, if you have the ability to do so.

First, lets discuss the notion of climate change in general. Climate is always changing. There has never been in the past, there is not now, and there will not in the future ever be such a thing as a steady state global climate. Of course, you are probably intelligent enough to understand this. Our world climate is naturally variable for many reasons, not the least being that we are in an imperfect orbit around a microvariable star. The issue at hand here is not AGW denial, which is an ignorant phrase that should be beneath your education, but whether or not the anthroprogenic variability can be separated from the natural variability with any sort of rational accuracy.

Second, lets discuss the political. I could get into a dissertation as to they roots of classic American liberalism but it would probably be boring to you since modern American education systems only focus on brainwashing and not education. However, I would point out to you that your assumption that the whole world believes in CAGW except for conservative Americans is patently incorrect. Only western European countries and their derivatives (read colonies turned countries) are true believers. Most of the second world countries mock it and the third world countries pay it lip service for money.

What I find interesting Kristi, is that despite the fact that not a single model is accurate CAGW believers still hold to them religiously. Despite the fact that all the horrible things that the CAGWers say will happen (i.e. the ice cap will be gone by 2015) have not happened, CAGWers still continue to be prophets of doom. Despite the fact that much of your evidence is circumstantial or worse, incorrectly concluded to be evidence, CAGWers keep tossing it against the wall hoping something will stick.

There are many people in every country of the world who believe in most amazing fantasies; more than that, many of these people have all kinds of diplomas and are ready to insist that they are the ones who know best, by producing self-made graphs and links to their own sites.

The modern term is “ecotone” — although Köppen used plants to set boundaries that sort of research was time consuming and costly. Then weather records were introduced and things have gone down hill since.

I’ve long wondered about the prevalence of skepticism among geologists and meteorologists and engineers. My hypothesis is that it’s mostly a matter of methods, and that creates a certain mindset about what science is, and what it should be. All of the professions use models, but they are quite different from those in climate science. I imagine many geological models are based on actual samples and their orientation in the land, along with mostly well-known processes that lead to formation of the different minerals. Something like that? And other types of models, I’m sure, but nothing so complex as climate. What about future processes? Pretty scant pickin’s.

Economic geologists are especially skeptical.

Engineering involves modeling that maximizes some parameters (strength, durability, efficiency…) and minimizing others (cost, environmental impact…), all within the boundaries of the project. Certainty is very important.

Weather forecasting is superficially like climate projection, but actually quite different. It’s understandable that meteorologists are suspicious of climate models when they know how difficult it is to forecast the weather, despite all the technological (and modeling) breakthroughs. And being familiar with probabilities and uncertainties is forecasting, it’s hard to imagine anyone can use models to say there’s a 90% probability that the sensitivity is 2-4.5 C. (And why hasn’t it gotten lower after all this time and money?)

So, that’s what I’ve thought about. Does that make any sense?

Ecology is similar to climate in that there are lots of interactions and feedbacks and dynamic processes. Models of ecosystem dynamics can include chemical reactions, energy and material fluxes, climate parameters, hydrology, solar effects, and anthropological factors.

There aren’t many biologists who are skeptics. I’m not sure if it’s because they think differently, or because they are aware of how dependent on environment organisms are, or they are more liberal.

I heard somewhere lately that climate change is now the number one predictor of Americans’ political leanings. There are plenty of ways to interpret that. Conservatives seem to believe liberals are socialists, and CAGW is just part of that mindset, or an excuse for world government or something. Or the left is full of fanatical anti-fossil fuel, anti-nuke greens who heartlessly want to kill the poor. Used to be, it was a Chinese hoax, but that has fallen out of fashion.

I’m not actually sure what the left think. i only know what I think, and I’m not sure how well that represents the left.

I think the alignment of climate change and politics comes mostly down to two things: the distrust in federal regulation by conservatives, and the fact that the fossil fuel propaganda was directed at them. It seems like skeptics should be more interested in this, but then again, it’s understandable that it’s avoided. No one wants to realize they’ve been manipulated, but we all have in various ways. Humans manipulate each other. We are all conditioned by our environment, and that includes the information we seek and take in.

I didn’t realize until yesterday that even the shareholders are suing Exxon over withholding information about climate change. I suspect most of these lawsuits are because people saw the actual documentation of the collusion between Exxon and conservative think tanks to spread (mis)information that contradicted what their own scientists were saying. Why isn’t this ever discussed around here? Why don’t people look beyond the silly court battles to what inspired them? I’ve provided links in the past, but they are ignored.

“I think the alignment of climate change and politics comes mostly down to two things…”

The Alignment of Politics and Global Warming was done deliberately. The founding of the IPCC is proof of this as it is not a scientific body but rather a Political one. Also the name change from “Global Warming” to “Climate Change” was a political decision, not a scientific one. “Global Warming” or “Anthropomorphic Global Warming” at least describes the problem that is being discussed. “Climate Change” is purposely vague and was chosen for use by politicians for that reason. Also the terms “Climate Denier” or “Climate Change Deniers” are political terms, not scientific ones as Global Warming skeptics do not deny there is a Climate or that the Climate Changes. Most Global Warming skeptics would even agree that man has some influence on the Climate, they are just not convinced it is a very large influence. Ironically, that means they would likely be included in the supposed 97% consensus on Global Warming.

Okay, I like some of the questions you ask Kristi, and then you go an ruin it.

Lets establish a few things.
A. I am an engineer
B. I don’t believe you can separate out anthroprogenic variability from natural variability in the climate with any rational certainty.
C. My belief system has nothing to do with fossil fuel propaganda. That thought process should be beneath your intelligence. This makes you sound like you are brainwashed.

“I don’t believe you can separate out anthroprogenic variability from natural variability in the climate with any rational certainty.”

Exactly. You would need a 100% certainty in ALL aspects of weather and climate to achieve such a thing.

When you can predict the weather 24 hours out with 100% accuracy, hell, even 75% accuracy, then maybe I’ll start to listen. If you can do it a month out with higher accuracy anywhere on the planet, then I’d say you’ve nailed it, and can MAYBE start making believable long term climate predictions.

“And being familiar with probabilities and uncertainties is forecasting, it’s hard to imagine anyone can use models to say there’s a 90% probability that the sensitivity is 2-4.5 C. (And why hasn’t it gotten lower after all this time and money?)”

ECS has gotten lower. It seems to go lower every time a new study comes out. The last study I saw had ECS at about 1.2C per doubling of CO2, and there are others that have it even lower.

The IPCC just pulled their ECS estimates of 1.5C-4.5C, out of thin air, and 1.2C per doubling is lower than the lowest estimate of the IPCC at 1.5C per doubling of CO2.

The goal of the IPCC is to keep the doubling below 1.5C. It looks to me like we are already there. We don’t need to build all those horrible windmills.

Modern education is inherently social(ist) for a variety of reasons. It is also conformist; if you do not conform you do not get your degree, and without that, you cannot get a job as a biologist (or much of anything else).

I heard somewhere lately that climate change is now the number one predictor of Americans’ political leanings.

FEAR of it is probably a more accurate description. Climate change by itself predicts nothing.

“There are plenty of ways to interpret that.”

Indeed, and your interpretation is my predictor of your political leaning!

“Conservatives seem to believe liberals are socialists”

That they are; but it is more of a definition. Socialists are not liberty-liberal; they co-opted the word for what is actually an extremely illiberal, group-think, mandatory-everything frame of mind.

“Or the left is full of fanatical anti-fossil fuel, anti-nuke greens who heartlessly want to kill the poor”

A pretty good description. I don’t know about the “full” part but the left is where they found their home.

“the distrust in federal regulation by conservatives”

It is how the United States came into existence.

“and the fact that the fossil fuel propaganda was directed at them”

Perhaps you could show an example of such a thing. The propaganda is polar bears falling out of the sky; stuff like that. A little contrary propaganda would be nice to keep things in balance.

“It seems like skeptics should be more interested in this”

The meaning of the word “skeptic” suggests disinterest.

“No one wants to realize they’ve been manipulated, but we all have in various ways.”

There is no “we”.

“We are all conditioned by our environment”

There is no “we”.

“I didn’t realize until yesterday that even the shareholders are suing Exxon”

It is a fairly obvious strategy for activists to buy shares and then try to destroy the company from within.

“Why isn’t this ever discussed around here?”

It is, ad nauseum. Exxon is in the oil discovery and recovery business, not the climate change business. It isn’t obvious to me why it is always “Exxon” as if there is no other oil company on Earth.

“Why don’t people look beyond the silly court battles to what inspired them?”

The question makes no sense and I cannot answer for other people. As to what inspired these battles, it will usually be *money* combined with some Useful Idiots. Hierarchies attract persons who desire power and influence; thus it is difficult or impossible for an organization to remain true to its founding principles; a piece of green comes to mind. Eventually it turns to raising money and building social power using any available tool for that purpose.

Liberals aren’t anything. It’s a smoke screen. They don’t believe in anything; this is becoming more and more obvious, every single day we see more overwhelming evidence.

Liberals claim to be many things, like people who care about due process, but would be happy if an endless investigation of “Russia collusion” and “Russia stole the election” ends up with Extreme Climate Danielle and no Russians.

Liberals claim to care about privacy, but they applaud Extreme Climate Danielle’s lawyer for violating the privacy of many people not related with the investigation.

Liberals claim to care about free speech rights, but they believe that those of their opponent can be restricted and that free speech doesn’t apply to criticism of journalists (unless it’s criticism from Extreme Climate Danielle’s lawyer).

Liberals claim to care about privacy, but claim that any money transaction should be traceable and that any donation to a political or moral cause can be publicized.

Liberals claim to care about the criminalisation of harmless conduct, but they claim that Russian opening bank accounts “under false identity” to pay for political ads is a serious crime, without establishing that there is a victim (was anyone defrauded in any practical sense?). They claim that opening an account under a false pretext is bank fraud and wire fraud even if no bank lost a penny, or could have lost one (or lost one in a parallel universe).

And it goes on and on. There are very few things that liberals can still claim to care about.

But interesting is this graphic, in which most Christian countries appear, but also a 98 percent Islamic state. Turkey. In Turkey, very few people believe that man has evolved from lower species. By implication, however, since Turkey is one of the most advanced Islamic countries, the world religion of Islam believes even less than Christianity that man has evolved from other predecessors. An Islamic supercreatonism, so to speak.

According to the Bible and the Koran, a creatonist view of the Earth’s evolution is likely.

In the world so many people are following creatonist views. Also nature religions are of this (creatonistic) view.

It was interesting to read Lief’s perspectives on a few issues which were different from his normal excellent commentary on solar matters. I would point out that illegal immigration is favored by those who desire to exploit cheap labor, people who cannot stand up for themselves in the legal system and thus lack the protections thereof. This is one of the reasons Senator John McCain favors open borders.

The employers of illegal immigrants mostly don’t pay employer mandated taxes on that illegal labor. The nation’s unemployment rate would even be lower if employer’s followed the law. It’s a shame the MSM has brain-washed so many liberals about this sad matter.

The Latinos are overwhelmingly hard working, conscientious employees, and it would be better for them to be legal immigrants.

Here are some amusing commonly held American beliefs and suspicions as of 80 years ago, courtesy of Mencken and Nathan:

American Credo:
That when one takes one’s best girl to see the monkeys in the zoo, the monkeys invariably do something that is very embarrassing.
That Professor Garner is able to carry on long and intimate conversations with monkeys in their own language.
That each year a man volunteers to take his children to the circus merely as a subterfuge to go himself.
That ginger snaps are made of the sweepings of the floor in the bakery.
That the licorice candy sold in cheap candy stores is made of old rubber boots.
That all the antique furniture sold in America is made in Grand Rapids, Mich., and that the holes testifying to its age are made either with gimlets or by trained worms.
That the Navajo blankets sold to trans-continental tourists by the Indians on the station platform at Albuquerque, New Mexico, are made by the Elite Novelty M’f’g. Co. of Passaic, N.J., and are bought by the Indians in lots of 1,000.
That newspaper reporters hear, every day, a great many thumping scandals that they fail to print, and that they refrain through considerations of honor.
That all girls educated in convents turn out in later life to be hell-raisers.
That when a play is given in an insane asylum the inmates always laugh at the tragic moments and cry at the humorous moments.
That when Washington crossed the Delaware, he stood up in the bow of the boat holding aloft a large American flag.
That the winters in the United States are a good deal less cold than they used to be, and that the change has been caused by the Gulf Stream.